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Overview

Cladior sits between your users and your app. It handles sign-in, billing and access control. You point one DNS record at us and change nothing else: no SDK, no package, no line of your code.

How it works

Normally your users call your API directly, and you build sign-up, payment and metering yourself. With Cladior they call an address we give you instead, and we pass the request straight through to your API:

Your user → Cladior → Your API

In that middle step we check the user is signed in, confirm they have money, charge them for what the response actually costs, and pay you. Your API receives an ordinary request and answers it as it always did.

Nothing about your existing code changes. You are pointing traffic at a different address, not rewriting your backend.

Before you start

  • An API that already runs somewhere. Cladior forwards there, so your server needs a public address we can reach. Localhost will not work.
  • A hostname for it that is not your website. If both are the same host you can still use your Cladior address, but not a custom domain later. There is more on why under Step 4.
  • A decision about price. You charge per kilobyte of what your API returns. You can change it afterwards.

You do not need a payment processor, a billing library, or a login system. That is the part Cladior replaces.

01

Add your app

In the dashboard, give your app a name and tell us two things: the address your users will visit, and the address your server actually answers on.

What we ask for
Public address   app.yourdomain.com
Your server      o-7f2k9x.yourdomain.com

These have to be different hostnames. The public one is what people type; the second is where we forward to. If your server answers on app.yourdomain.com today, move it to a new name first and leave the public one free.

Then set your rate per kilobyte. You receive that rate in full: Cladior's fee is added on top of it, never taken out of it.

02

Point one DNS record at us

Wherever your DNS is hosted, which is decided by your domain's nameservers and is not always the company you bought the domain from. If your nameservers point at Cloudflare, the record goes in Cloudflare even though the invoice came from your registrar. You need no account with us beyond your dashboard login. Where the record goes covers each provider.

DNS record
Type    CNAME
Name    app
Target  proxy.cladior.com

That is the integration. Certificates are issued and renewed for you. No script tag, no package to install, no line of your application changes, and nothing to redeploy.

Already on Cloudflare? Set this record to DNS only, the grey cloud, rather than proxied. Two proxies in a row will not route correctly.
03

Lock your server to us

Optional, and worth ten minutes. Your server stays reachable at the address from step 01, so anyone who finds it can use your app without passing through Cladior, and those requests are never billed.

You do not write a check for this. Every major host already has a way to refuse traffic that is not us, and Cladior holds whatever credential that host expects.

Your own server, nginx
ssl_client_certificate /etc/ssl/cladior-origin-ca.pem;
ssl_verify_client on;

On Vercel, switch on Deployment Protection and paste the bypass secret into your dashboard. On Netlify, set a site password and paste it in. On your own server or a load balancer, the two lines above.

Instructions for every host, including the ones where this is not possible and what to do instead.

What your users see

The first time somebody visits, they are asked to connect a Cladior account, the same way a site asks you to sign in with Google. After that they are never asked again and your app loads normally. They pay for what they use, by the kilobyte, from credit they buy once and spend across every app on Cladior.

Your application is not told any of this happened. It receives ordinary HTTP requests and answers them.