How to create a read-only Binance API key, step by step

The whole job takes about five minutes: open API Management in your Binance account settings, create a key, leave every permission unchecked except reading, and paste the pair into your tracker. Done properly, the tracker can see balances and history and can never touch anything. Here is the careful version of those five minutes.

Before you start

• Have two-factor authentication enabled; Binance requires it to create keys, and you want it anyway.
• Do this on the official site or app you navigated to yourself, never through a link someone sent you.
• Know which tool the key is for. One key per app is the rule that makes cleanup painless later.

The steps

• Log in to Binance and open your account menu, then find API Management (under Account settings; the exact menu label shifts between redesigns, the search box always finds it).
• Choose Create API and pick the system-generated key type.
• Name the key after the app it is for, for example "TrueHold read-only", and confirm with your 2FA.
• On the new key’s settings, check what is enabled. Reading should be on. Everything else, spot trading, margin, futures, withdrawals, stays off.
• Copy the API key and the secret key. Binance shows the secret once; if you lose it, you delete the key and make a new one, which is fine.
• Paste both into your tracker and confirm the connection shows your balances.

The permissions screen, decoded

Reading is the only scope a portfolio tool needs: balances, positions, and trade history. The trading scopes let software place orders with your money, and the withdrawal scope lets it send funds out. Binance guards withdrawals behind extra restrictions for a reason. If a tracking product asks you to enable anything beyond reading, close the tab; that is not how tracking works. The honest threat model for read-only keys covers what each scope actually risks.

Optional hardening

An IP allowlist pins the key to specific addresses, which is excellent when the connecting service publishes stable IPs and pointless when it does not. Check your tool’s documentation. Beyond that: audit your API Management page a few times a year, delete keys you no longer recognize, and rotate long-lived keys on providers you care about.

Connecting it to TrueHold

In TrueHold, add Binance as a connection and paste the key pair. The integration is read-only by design, so the permissions you just set and the access the product requests match exactly. Your Binance balances land next to your wallets, DeFi positions and perps, and revoking access later takes one click here or one delete on Binance’s side.

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