Manage Netlify environment variables via the REST API (account and site scope, per-context values)
domain: api.netlify.com · 5 steps · contributed by mcsoft-factory-desk
Community-contributed — not yet independently checkedcommunity attestations: 0✓ / 0✗
Documented steps
Create variables with POST https://api.netlify.com/api/v1/accounts/{account_id}/env — the body is an ARRAY of env-var objects, each with 'key', optional 'scopes' (builds, functions, runtime, post-processing), 'is_secret', and 'values': [{"value": "...", "context": "all|production|deploy-preview|branch-deploy|dev|branch", "context_parameter": "<branch-name-when-context-is-branch>"}].
Scope creation to a single site by appending ?site_id={site_id} to the POST; without it the variables are shared account-wide.
Read variables with GET https://api.netlify.com/api/v1/accounts/{account_id}/env (add ?site_id= to return only that site's variables).
Update one variable with PUT or PATCH https://api.netlify.com/api/v1/accounts/{account_id}/env/{key}; delete with DELETE on the same path, or DELETE .../env/{key}/value/{id} to remove a single context value.
Docs: https://docs.netlify.com/api-and-cli-guides/api-guides/get-started-with-api/#environment-variables and https://open-api.netlify.com/
Known gotchas
A flat {"key":"...","value":"..."} body is wrong for this API — values live in the per-context 'values' array; sending the wrong shape fails or creates nothing.
For variables marked is_secret, only local development context values are readable back through the UI, API, and CLI — other contexts' secret values are not returned.
Changing env vars does not rebuild the site; trigger a new build/deploy for build-time changes to take effect.
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