Introducing the Members.dev membership API and documentation

Membership software rarely sits on its own. Most membership programs need more: integrations with their email system or payment providers, sync with an existing user directory, a custom member portal on their own domain, check-in at the door, or a points balance surfaced in a mobile app.

Members.dev is API-first, so our admin dashboard and your own integrations or custom dashboards share the exact same membership management API. Today we are introducing the membership API publicly, alongside the documentation and API reference that your developers need to build on top of it.

Why we built Members.dev's membership API

Existing membership management APIs are incomplete. They're often read-only, support only a subset of features, and documentation is sparse and lacks implementation guides. Many APIs are gated behind premium tiers, making them inaccessible to smaller organizations that are increasingly using AI to develop their own platforms.

If an organization needs to run membership via API, their only choice is to develop a bespoke membership backend, which consumes significant resources and hinders their program's future flexibility.

That's why we built Members.dev: a full membership engine with all the backend layers you need: member database, products and subscriptions, invoicing, entitlement tracking, and admin tooling. Everything is accessible through the membership REST API and a modern dashboard for non-developer users. Developers no longer need to reinvent business rules for subscription pauses, cancellations, and entitlement tracking, while operators still have a capable dashboard without writing code.

The Members.dev membership API

The API lives at https://api.members.dev. Grab an API key via the admin dashboard, and use the same endpoints we rely on internally: read and write members, subscriptions, invoices, products, benefits, and usage.

Webhooks complement the API: subscribe to membership lifecycle events like joins, successful payments, subscription changes, cancellations so you can update other systems like access control and email marketing. Webhooks are still in early access, so contact us to enable them.

You can own the member-facing product while the API handles membership-specific complexity like proration, pause and cancel policies, group subscriptions, custom fields, and entitlement logic.

Build fully custom membership experiences

The membership API is meant to enable bespoke experiences: your brand, your UX, domain, and custom integrations without rebuilding a membership engine from scratch. Members.dev handles the people, money, benefits, and admin panel; your app is what members actually see and touch.

Examples teams are building today:

• Branded member portals: sign up, manage subscriptions, update profile and custom fields, and show live benefit balances in a website or mobile app you already operate.
• Custom checkout and onboarding: collect waivers, parental consent, or chapter-specific data at join time, then create users and subscriptions through the API while invoicing and renewals run in the background.
• Access control and check-in: validate membership at a door or turnstile (for example with a barcode or card scan), record usage when someone redeems a class credit or guest pass, and revoke access when an invoice is overdue.
• Point of sale integrations: apply member discounts automatically at the point of sale for equipment rentals, shops, bars, and restaurants.
• Loyalty programs: Hotels, resorts, and travel companies can use our benefit tracking to track point balances and tiers, expiry dates and first-in-first-out usage, and even provide API tokens for partnership earning programs.
• Operational glue: keep a CRM or data warehouse in sync; link every record with external_id so migrations and nightly syncs stay predictable.
• Chapter and campus programs: give each club or chapter its own product catalog and admins while members use one account across organizations, when multi-tenancy is enabled.

If you have a design in mind and want a sanity check, support@members.dev can help with scoping and we can pair on implementation for larger rollouts.

Documentation for builders and operators

An API is only as useful as the docs beside it. We publish in-depth documentation on members.dev/docs:

Product documentation explains how membership works in Members.dev from a builder's perspective: the membership database, subscription management, automatic invoicing, benefit entitlement tracking, and multi-tenancy. Use it to understand the platform and design an integration before you write code, or to brief vendors and internal teams on how data should behave.

API reference documents the membership API in detail: authentication, errors, pagination, rate limits, IDs, versioning, and endpoint-level reference as we expand coverage. It is built from our OpenAPI specification, so it is always up to date with the latest features and changes.

We want your feedback

Our Docs and API will continue to evolve as Members.dev grows and we add new features. Membership programs vary, and the questions we hear in support and onboarding become the next pages, examples, and reference sections.

We are writing for developers and administrators. If that's you, tell us what you'd like to see:

• Email: support@members.dev (reaches the team building the API and docs)
• Dashboard: if something in the docs does not match what you see in the product, let us know

We will announce major doc and API updates here on the developer blog: webhook guides, cookbooks for common stacks, and deeper endpoint and data model walkthroughs.

Get started

• Explore the documentation home
• Read the membership API reference
• Review API and webhooks on the marketing site
• Get in touch with support@members.dev with questions or feedback

Not writing code yourself? The admin dashboard exposes the same capabilities; share the docs with the developers, agencies, or vendors who will connect your program to the rest of your stack.

Migrating to Members.dev

Want to move to Members.dev from another platform? We can help with migration and onboarding, and our data models include an external_id field to preserve links to IDs in your old stack while you run parallel systems or phased rollouts.

Timing depends on how products and benefits were modeled elsewhere and any integrations you must replace or reconnect. We offer white-glove onboarding for all new customers regardless of whether you are coming from a spreadsheet or an enterprise ERP.

• Compare Members.dev with tools you may be leaving: comparison guides
• Book a demo or get in touch to talk through migration
• Email support@members.dev with export samples or integration questions

Finally, thank you to the early teams who exercised the API and reviewed draft docs!