Quickstart

This page shows you the steps needed to get started with the Reka API and running the Reka Edge model locally.

• Run models on the Reka Platform
• Run Reka Edge locally (macOS)
• Run Reka Edge locally using OpenAI-compatible server (Linux)

Run models on the Reka Platform

Create a free account on the Reka Platform to access your API key.

Install the SDK

Install the OpenAI Python SDK — our API is fully OpenAI-compatible.

$
pip install openai

Available models

Our baseline models always available for public access are:

Make your first request

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from openai import OpenAI
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client = OpenAI(
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    base_url="https://api.reka.ai/v1",
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    api_key="YOUR_API_KEY",
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)
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response = client.chat.completions.create(
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    model="reka-edge",  # or "reka-flash"
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    messages=[
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        {
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            "role": "user",
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            "content": [
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                {"type": "image_url", "image_url": {"url": "https://v0.docs.reka.ai/_images/000000245576.jpg"}},
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                {"type": "text", "text": "What do you like about this image?"}
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            ],
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        }
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    ],
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)
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print(response.choices[0].message.content)

Run Reka Edge locally (macOS)

See our HuggingFace repository for instructions on running Reka Edge locally.

Requirements

• OS: macOS 13+
• Hardware: Apple Silicon Mac with 32 GB+ unified memory (M1 Pro/Max or later recommended)
• Python: 3.12+
• uv (recommended) — handles dependencies automatically

Run Reka Edge locally using OpenAI-compatible server (Linux)

For high-throughput serving, you can use the vllm-reka plugin that extends standard vLLM to support Reka’s custom architectures and optimized tokenizer. Please follow our vllm-reka installation instructions to install the plugin along with vLLM.

Requirements

• OS: Linux with CUDA. macOS is not supported for serving.
• Hardware: NVIDIA GPU, ideally with ≥24 GB VRAM. This has been tested to work on GTX 3090 GPUs with 40-50 tokens/s.
• Python: 3.10 ≥ x > 3.14
• vLLM: 0.15.x (0.15.0 ≥ x > 0.16.0)

Next up

Explore the Reka API’s capabilities through the following guides:

• Chatting with text, images, and video
• Visual understanding (from images to long-form videos)
• Speech translation and transcription