Load Stripe - Main API data to PostgreSQL

Stripe is a payments platform with a REST API for managing payment, billing, customer, and other financial resources. Everything needed to build a working Stripe - Main API → PostgreSQL pipeline is on this page: the API's base URL, authentication, endpoints, pagination and incremental field — plus a prompt that hands the whole job to your coding agent.

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Build your Stripe - Main API to PostgreSQL pipeline

Paste this prompt into Claude, Codex, or Cursor. The agent does the rest.

That scaffolds a dltHub workspace and installs the dltHub AI harness — the project rules, the secrets-management skill, and the dlt MCP server your agent needs to work safely. From there it reads the Stripe - Main API API, proposes the endpoints to load, then writes, runs and validates the pipeline while you review rather than type. Credentials are inspected through MCP tools, so your agent never reads secrets.toml itself. How the LLM-native workflow works →

Prefer to write it yourself? Every fact the agent uses is below.

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Stripe - Main API API at a glance

These values come from the Stripe - Main API API reference — the authoritative source if anything here looks out of date.

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How do I authenticate with the Stripe - Main API API?

Send the secret key in the HTTP Authorization header as Authorization: Bearer <SECRET_KEY>. Stripe documents HTTP Basic Auth as the primary method, with the API key as the username and no password, but explicitly supports bearer authentication as an alternative. Requests must use HTTPS; no additional required header was specified.

1. Get your credentials

1. Sign in to the Stripe Dashboard at https://dashboard.stripe.com/ and select the intended account and environment (sandbox/test mode or live mode). 2. Open Developers > API keys (the API keys page), where Stripe lets you create, reveal, expire, and rotate keys for the account or sandbox you’re viewing. 3. For a server-side integration, create or reveal a secret key, or preferably create a restricted API key and grant only the read permissions required by the dlt source. Stripe’s unrestricted secret keys begin with sk_test_ in test mode or sk_live_ in live mode; restricted keys use rk_ prefixes. 4. Copy the secret value when shown and store it immediately in a secrets manager or environment variable; Stripe displays a newly created secret key only once. 5. Configure the dlt source with the key as a bearer credential. For raw REST requests, send Authorization: Bearer <STRIPE_SECRET_KEY> to https://api.stripe.com/v1/.... Stripe’s normal authentication mechanism is HTTP Basic Auth with the API key as the username, but bearer authentication is explicitly supported when needed. Never expose a secret/restricted key in client-side code, logs, or version control; rotate it if exposed.

2. Add them to .dlt/secrets.toml

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[sources.stripe_main_api_source]
api_key = "sk_test_REPLACE_WITH_STRIPE_SECRET_KEY"

dlt reads this file automatically at runtime. With the harness, the setup-secrets skill prompts you for the values and never handles the raw credential in chat. For production, see setting up credentials with dlt.

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What Stripe - Main API data can I load into PostgreSQL?

These are the Stripe - Main API endpoints dlt can load into PostgreSQL:

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How do I load only new Stripe - Main API records?

Stripe - Main API exposes created on charges, so dlt can request only the records that changed since the last run. Set it as the cursor_path and dlt tracks the high-water mark for you between runs.

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{"name": "charges", "endpoint": {
    "path": "charges",
    "data_selector": "data",
    "incremental": {"cursor_path": "created", "initial_value": "2024-01-01T00:00:00Z"},
}}

On the first run dlt loads everything from initial_value; on every run after that it requests only what changed and appends with write_disposition="merge" if you set a primary key. See incremental loading.

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What does the generated Stripe - Main API pipeline look like?

A standard dlt REST API pipeline — the same code you would write by hand, loading customers and charges from the Stripe - Main API API into PostgreSQL:

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import dlt
from dlt.sources.rest_api import RESTAPIConfig, rest_api_resources

@dlt.source
def stripe_main_api_source(api_key=dlt.secrets.value):
    config: RESTAPIConfig = {
        "client": {
            "base_url": "https://api.stripe.com/v1",
            "auth": {"type": "bearer", "token": api_key},
        },
        "resources": [
            {"name": "charges", "endpoint": {"path": "charges", "data_selector": "data"}},
            {"name": "customers", "endpoint": {"path": "customers", "data_selector": "data"}}
        ],
    }
    yield from rest_api_resources(config)


def load_stripe_main_api_to_postgres() -> None:
    pipeline = dlt.pipeline(
        pipeline_name="stripe_main_api_pipeline",
        destination="postgres",
        dataset_name="stripe_main_api_data",
    )
    load_info = pipeline.run(stripe_main_api_source())
    print(load_info)


if __name__ == "__main__":
    load_stripe_main_api_to_postgres()

Run it with uv run python stripe_main_api_pipeline.py. The agent iterates on this until it loads cleanly — you review and approve, rather than write it from scratch.

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How do I query Stripe - Main API data in PostgreSQL?

dlt creates one table per resource. Query the loaded data with Python or SQL — or ask your agent to, through the MCP server's execute_sql_query tool.

Python (pandas DataFrame):

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import dlt

data = dlt.pipeline("stripe_main_api_pipeline").dataset()
df = data.charges.df()
print(df.head())

SQL:

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SELECT * FROM stripe_main_api_data.charges LIMIT 10;

See querying your data with dataset and exploring it in marimo notebooks.

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How do I deploy the Stripe - Main API to PostgreSQL pipeline in production?

The pipeline runs locally, which is ideal for prototyping and one-off analysis. When you need it on a schedule, monitored on every load, and shared with your team, deploy the same dlt code on the dltHub platform — no infrastructure to maintain. The prompt above already ends with "run it on dltHub", so your agent can take it there directly.

• Deploy & schedule — run the pipeline as a managed job with automatic retries.
• Monitor — observable job queues, alerting, and load metrics for every run.
• Transform — promote raw Stripe - Main API loads into governed, documented models.
• Visualize & share — explore data in notebooks and publish live dashboards instead of static screenshots.

Book a demo →

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What other destinations can I load Stripe - Main API data to?

dlt loads into any of these — only the destination argument changes:

Set dlt.pipeline(destination="snowflake") and add credentials in .dlt/secrets.toml. On the dltHub platform the same pipeline runs against a managed Iceberg lakehouse. See the full destinations list.

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Next steps

• Ready for production? Book a demo of the dltHub platform →
• dlt LLM-native workflow docs
• REST API source reference
• Join the dlt community on Slack