What an API key lets a tool see, and what it does not
Every Torn faction tool asks for an API key, and it is reasonable to hesitate before handing one over. Torn issues keys at four permission levels, and the difference matters more than most tools explain.
Torn Intel runs on a Limited Access key. That level can read: your profile, your faction's member list and their activity, personal stats, and the public game data any player can look up. What it categorically cannot do is act on your account. No trades, no money transfers, no attacks, no item movement. Those actions require Full Access, which this site never requires. Two optional readers of your own activity log (the Halloween basket and the travel report) can use one, and keep it in your browser.
The practical test to apply to any Torn tool: if it asks for Full Access without a concrete reason, ask what needs it. A tracker reads data. It has no business holding a key that can move your assets.
Keys are encrypted at rest with AES-256-GCM and never stored in plain text. The full detail, including what happens if you revoke a key, is on the security page.
What "free" covers here
Free means the eleven tools above, with no time limit, no trial countdown and no card. The reason that is sustainable is worth stating plainly: the expensive part of running a faction tracker is not serving pages, it is calling the Torn API often enough to keep data fresh. Free features read data that is already being collected for the faction, so an extra free account costs close to nothing.
The most useful thing in the free tier is usually activity tracking. Torn shows you who is online right now; a tracker shows you the pattern over weeks, which is what tells you whether a member is genuinely active, drifting, or gone. Officers use it for the conversation they would otherwise have to guess their way through.
The armory history is the other one worth knowing about. It keeps the last 30 days of faction armory events, who used, filled or loaned what, so a missing item has a name next to it instead of a shrug.
Where the free tier stops
Being honest about the ceiling saves you time. Free covers seven personal stats, which is enough for activity and basic performance questions. It does not cover the deep stat history, war intelligence, spy data aggregation or multi-faction monitoring that Pro adds, because those need substantially more API calls per faction per day and a lot more stored history.
If your faction does not run ranked wars, free is very likely all you need. If you do run wars, the gap shows up in one specific place: after a war, working out who actually contributed. That question needs per-member attack history, which is a Pro feature because collecting it is the costly part.
One thing that is free regardless of tier: the live abroad stock map. Neither needs an account at all.
Getting connected
Generate a Limited Access key in Torn under Settings, then API Keys, and paste it in. There is nothing else to configure: your faction is read from the key, and the member list populates on first load. If you are the first person from your faction to sign in, you become its owner and can invite officers afterwards.
Revoking access is equally direct. Delete the key in Torn and it stops working immediately, with no need to ask anyone here to do anything.