nthbouncer
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Quickstart

Give agents access to PostgreSQL or MySQL so they work from real tables and columns for more accurate results, without sharing the password. Or proxy an HTTPS origin through the same pool. For Cursor or Claude, add https://nthbouncer.com/mcp and follow Agents. The steps below walk an HTTPS origin with curl.

Prerequisites

  • An nthbouncer account (sign up at nthbouncer.com)
  • An upstream API URL you are allowed to call
  • A tool that can send HTTP requests (curl is enough)

Create a pool

  1. Open the dashboard and select Pools → Create pool.
  2. Choose a subdomain (this becomes ‹subdomain›.nthpool.cloud).
  3. Add at least one origin (the upstream base URL).
  4. Pick Pass-through if your client already authenticates to the upstream, or Managed if nthbouncer should attach credentials for you.
  5. Save. The pool goes live within a few seconds.

Create a pool key

  1. Open the pool → Access.
  2. Select Create key, name it, and copy the secret once.
  3. Store it as an environment variable. It is not shown again.

Send a request

Replace the placeholders and call your pool hostname. The path after the host is forwarded to the selected origin.

export POOL_KEY='nb_live_…'
export POOL_HOST='https://your-pool.nthpool.cloud'

curl -sS "$POOL_HOST/your/api/path" \
  -H "X-Nthpool-Key: $POOL_KEY"

On a managed pool you may also send Authorization: Bearer $POOL_KEY. On a pass-through pool, keep the pool key in X-Nthpool-Key and put the upstream credential in Authorization (or whatever the upstream expects).

If the pool has multiple origins, pick one explicitly:

curl -sS "$POOL_HOST/your/api/path" \
  -H "X-Nthpool-Key: $POOL_KEY" \
  -H "X-Nthpool-Origin: https://api.example.com"

Confirm admission

A successful response includes headers such as x-nthpool-remaining-slots and x-nthpool-effective-limit. Open the pool's Logs page to see the request in access logs, or Metrics for admit/queue/reject proof (not the same as Billing allowance).

Next steps