# Monitor your own addresses on a schedule

`POST /api/v1/ip/monitors`

- Authentication: Secret API key as a bearer token
- Billing: Creation is free. Each run bills every address like a single lookup: 1 credit for a fresh answered lookup; reserved addresses and 7-day repeats are free, so a daily list costs at most one credit per address a week.
- Group: IP

Saves up to 500 of your own addresses, your egress addresses, mail servers and office connections, and re-checks them every day, week or month. Addresses are canonicalised and deduplicated. The first run starts right away and only sets the baseline; from the next run on, every address that newly lands on a threat blocklist (Spamhaus DROP, ASN-DROP or the botnet C2 list), becomes a Tor exit, or scores high is reported to the account's email with the reason, so you learn that a mail server sits on a blocklist before your recipients' inboxes do.

Answers `201` with the monitor. The baseline run is queued, not finished: poll the monitor for `last_run_at` and `last_summary`.

## Request body

| Field | Type | Required | Description |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| `name` | string | yes | A label for the alerts. At most 100 characters. |
| `ips` | string[] | yes | 1 to 500 IPv4 or IPv6 addresses; duplicates and alternative spellings of one address count once. |
| `cadence` | string | yes | How often the list is re-checked. One of: daily, weekly, monthly. |

## Example request

```bash
curl -X POST https://spaw.co/api/v1/ip/monitors \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer sk_live_…" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
  "name": "Mail servers",
  "ips": [
    "203.0.113.25",
    "2001:db8::25"
  ],
  "cadence": "daily"
}'
```

## Responses

### 201 — The monitor was saved and its baseline run queued.

```json
{
    "success": true,
    "data": {
        "monitor": {
            "id": 4,
            "name": "Mail servers",
            "cadence": "daily",
            "ip_count": 2,
            "next_run_at": "2026-09-06T10:12:44+00:00",
            "last_run_at": null,
            "last_summary": null,
            "created_at": "2026-09-05T10:12:44+00:00"
        }
    }
}
```

### 401 — The key is missing, malformed, or revoked.

```json
{
    "success": false,
    "error": {
        "code": "UNAUTHENTICATED",
        "message": "Provide a valid API key as a bearer token.",
        "request_id": "req_01m1kgdm4xngzmbmff68g94w0c"
    }
}
```

### 422 — The request body could not be validated; `error.errors` lists the fields.

```json
{
    "success": false,
    "error": {
        "code": "VALIDATION_FAILED",
        "message": "The email field is required.",
        "errors": {
            "email": [
                "The email field is required."
            ]
        },
        "request_id": "req_01m1kgdm4xngzmbmff68g94w0c"
    }
}
```

### 429 — Over 5 requests per second for the key. Retry after the limit resets.

```json
{
    "success": false,
    "error": {
        "code": "RATE_LIMITED",
        "message": "Too many requests. Retry after the limit resets.",
        "request_id": "req_01m1kgdm4xngzmbmff68g94w0c"
    }
}
```

## Error codes

- `UNAUTHENTICATED` — https://spaw.co/docs/errors/UNAUTHENTICATED
- `VALIDATION_FAILED` — https://spaw.co/docs/errors/VALIDATION_FAILED
- `RATE_LIMITED` — https://spaw.co/docs/errors/RATE_LIMITED

---

Canonical page: https://spaw.co/docs/api/create-ip-monitor · OpenAPI document: https://spaw.co/openapi.json · All endpoints: https://spaw.co/docs/api