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Welcome to Core API

How to get started with Commerce Layer Core API and set up your first organization

Commerce Layer Core API is our foundational REST API that powers transactional commerce for international brands. It provides everything you need to make any digital experience shoppable — from multi-currency prices and distributed inventory to localized payment gateways, promotions, orders, subscriptions, and more.

Commerce Layer is free for developers, and it will be forever. So the best way to get started is to create an account and try the API.

Commerce Layer Core API is versioned. The examples in this guide don't specify a version, so they run on the default 2017-08 version. This version is due to be phased out over time and will only be maintained on a bug-fix basis: all new features, starting with the redesigned payments flow, will be added to a newer version only. That version, 2026-05, is stable, but the new resources it introduces are currently in beta, the redesigned payments flow first. We encourage you to make the switch. Learn how versioning works in API versioning, and use the version selector to jump to the new API reference. Additional documentation for the new payments flow is coming soon: for the moment, it is available on request to clients interested in the beta.

Once you signed up, you have two options to configure your environment:

  • Leverage the setup wizard available in the Dashboard UI. This is the fastest way to add a minimum viable configuration to your environment and be ready to place your first order in a short time.

  • Manually create all the required resources in the correct order (based on their mutual relationships) and configure your organization step-by-step. This could take a while longer, but it's a good opportunity to dig deeper into how Commerce Layer works, learn more about how its data model is structured, and get to grip with a powerful tool like the Commerce Layer CLI that will enable you to complete the whole process without leaving the command line.

Take your pick, and let's get started!

NextGuided setup

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