Getting Started

Three things stand between you and your first processed document: an account, your API key, and one request.

1. Create your account

Sign up on the Developer Portal, then click ACTIVATE YOUR ACCOUNT in the email we send you.

Verifying your email automatically issues your free trial license key. You don't need to create one — go to Resources → Manage License Keys to view and copy it.

Your trial includes:

• 500 API calls
• 30 days, starting the moment you verify your email. The Status column shows the days remaining.
• All 37 operations — nothing is gated behind a paid tier

One key, cloud API and both SDKs. Each account gets a single trial key and it can't be replaced, so store it the way you'd store any other credential.

Your 30 days are already running. If you're not ready to integrate yet, the interactive Swagger UI on every endpoint page lets you run real requests in the browser, and section 3 gets you a working call in about a minute.

2. Authenticate

Send your license key in the X-API-KEY header on every request.

  X-API-KEY: <your license key>

Base URL:

  https://api-developers.avanquest.com

3. Make your first call

This compresses a local PDF. Replace YOUR_API_KEY with the key from your dashboard.

  curl -X POST https://api-developers.avanquest.com/pdf-compress/v1 \
  -H "X-API-KEY: YOUR_API_KEY" \
  -F "[email protected]"

file is the only required parameter. It accepts PDF only, up to 100 MB.

You'll get back 202 Accepted and an operation id:

  {
    "id": "3fa85f64-5717-4562-b3fc-2c963f66afa6"
  }

That's your first successful call. The compressed file isn't back yet — see section 4.

Compress also takes three optional parameters:

Every other endpoint follows the same shape: POST /{operation}/v1 with multipart/form-data. See /pdf-merge/v1, /pdf-convert/v1, and the rest in the API reference.

4. Get your result

Every processing endpoint is asynchronous: you trigger an operation, then collect the result. There are two ways to do that.

Option A — poll for status

Call GET /operation/v1/{operationId}/status until the status is completed.

  curl https://api-developers.avanquest.com/operation/v1/3fa85f64-5717-4562-b3fc-2c963f66afa6/status \
  -H "X-API-KEY: YOUR_API_KEY"

  {
    "status": "pending | processing | completed | failed",
    "progress": 42,
    "error": { "message": "string" }
  }

progress appears while processing. error appears only when failed.

Option B — use a webhook

Pass an HTTPS callback URL in the X-Callback-Url header on the original request. We POST the final operation status to that URL when the job finishes, so there's no polling loop to write.

  curl -X POST https://api-developers.avanquest.com/pdf-compress/v1 \
  -H "X-API-KEY: YOUR_API_KEY" \
  -H "X-Callback-Url: https://example.com/webhooks/techportal" \
  -F "[email protected]"

Passing a callback URL also routes the operation to our long-running queue, which has no maximum timeout. Use it for large files and heavy operations such as OCR.

Download the file

Once the status is completed, fetch the result:

  curl https://api-developers.avanquest.com/operation/v1/3fa85f64-5717-4562-b3fc-2c963f66afa6/download \
  -H "X-API-KEY: YOUR_API_KEY" \
  -o compressed.pdf

The result is available for 10 minutes after the operation completes. After that, run the operation again.

5. Try it in your browser first

Every endpoint page in this reference ships an interactive Swagger UI covering the whole flow — operation, status, download — so you can run real requests against your key without writing any code.

Start with Compress PDF.

If something doesn't work

Moving to production

A permanent license key has no expiry, lets you create as many keys as you need, and lets you edit the permissions on existing keys.

Talk to us — pricing is published upfront.

Next steps

• Browse all endpoints
• Call the API from an AI assistant with the MCP server