Getting Started

Start with the public IX-API sandbox. It is a test implementation of IX-API that anyone can use, so you need no account at an exchange. You need an MCP client, such as Claude Code, and an IX-API key and secret, which you create on the sandbox’s front page. There is nothing to install.

Get a sandbox key and secret

Open sandbox.ix-api.net . Under Getting Started, keep the suggested Customer name or type your own, and press Create Account. The page then shows your account, an API key and a secret. Keep the key and the secret at hand: you sign in with them.

The IX-API Sandbox create customer form.

Add it to Claude Code

claude mcp add --transport http ix-api https://sandbox.ix-api.net/agents/mcp
claude mcp login ix-api

The first command adds the sandbox’s MCP server under the name ix-api. The second opens your browser to sign in. You can also sign in from inside Claude Code: run /mcp, pick ix-api and choose Authenticate.

Claude Code’s /mcp panel for the ix-api server: status needs authentication, not authenticated, URL https://sandbox.ix-api.net/agents/mcp, with Authenticate selected

Add it to Claude Desktop or claude.ai

In claude.ai or Claude Desktop, add a custom connector under Settings and give it the same URL, https://sandbox.ix-api.net/agents/mcp. Claude asks you to connect the first time you use it.

Add it to GitHub Copilot CLI

copilot mcp add --transport http ix-api https://sandbox.ix-api.net/agents/mcp

Then start copilot and run /mcp auth ix-api. It opens your browser to sign in.

Add it to Codex CLI

codex mcp add ix-api --url https://sandbox.ix-api.net/agents/mcp

Codex sees that the server uses OAuth and opens your browser to sign in right away. To sign in again later, run codex mcp login ix-api.

Add it to another MCP client

Any client that speaks MCP over HTTP with OAuth works. The server registers clients itself, and also accepts a client id that is the URL of a client metadata document. Your client needs no client secret of its own. You sign in with your IX-API key and secret, as below.

Your browser opens a page served by the MCP server. The page names the application that is asking and the IX-API it will act on. Check both, then enter your IX-API key and secret.

The sign-in page of the sandbox MCP server: Claude Code, verified by claude.ai, wants to connect to IX-API at https://sandbox.ix-api.net/api/v2, with empty fields for the IX-API key and secret and an Authorize button

Press Authorize. The server sends your browser back to your client. Claude Code then shows this page, and you can close the tab:

A browser tab after signing in: Connected, Authentication successful. You can close this tab and return to Claude Code.

Back in Claude Code, /mcp reports the connection:

Claude Code after signing in: /mcp reports Authentication successful. Connected to ix-api.

The server runs one login with those credentials and keeps the session in memory. A session ends after 12 hours idle, after 7 days, when the client revokes it, or when the server restarts. After that you sign in again.

Try the first prompt

Ask for your account, in your own words:

Show my IX-API account.

An answer naming your account means the whole path works: your client, the server, and the exchange. On the sandbox, it is the account you created there.

Claude Code answering “hej! please show my ix-api account”: it called ixapi, then showed the sandbox account the session is logged in as, Open-Architected Responsive Communications GmbH, with ID 140, state production, no status messages, not discoverable

Connect your own exchange

When you are ready for your real account, ask your exchange for the address of its IX-API MCP Server. Add it the same way, under a name of your own, and sign in with the IX-API key and secret that exchange issued you:

claude mcp add --transport http my-exchange https://mcp.example-exchange.net/mcp
claude mcp login my-exchange

Next: Using IX-API MCP Server .