A practical guide to the Freshdesk ticket API with examples (2025)

So, you're using Freshdesk. It's a fantastic helpdesk, no argument there. But if you’re just using what's in the box, you might be missing out on its real power. The magic starts when you get Freshdesk talking to your other tools, automating the tedious bits of your day.

Traditionally, the key to unlocking all this has been the Freshdesk API. It’s what lets your developers build custom reports, trigger actions from other apps, and generally get your support data flowing through the rest of your business.

This guide will give you a straightforward look at the Freshdesk ticket API. We'll walk through some common Freshdesk ticket API examples and look at a few different ways to get automation done, whether you have a team of developers or you’d rather handle it yourself.

Understanding the Freshdesk ticket API

Think of an API (Application Programming Interface) as a private messenger between your software. It’s a set of rules that lets different apps swap information and tell each other what to do. The Freshdesk API is a REST API, a common standard for these messengers. It lets you manage your helpdesk data programmatically, meaning you can write code to create, read, update, and delete tickets.

Before you jump in, here are a few things you’ll need to get your head around:

• Authentication: You can’t just let any app access your customer data. Every request sent to the API needs to prove it has permission. You do this with an API key, which you can find in your Freshdesk profile settings. It's basically a secret password for your apps.

• Rate Limits: Freshdesk keeps an eye on how many requests you’re making to avoid overloading their servers. They limit how many API calls you can make per minute, and this number depends on your Freshdesk pricing plan. If you're building an integration that deals with a lot of tickets, you could bump into these limits, which might cause your automation to pause.

• Developer Resources: Using the API isn't exactly a point-and-click affair. It usually requires someone who knows their way around a programming language (like Python) to write, host, and look after the code that makes it all work.

While the API is a workhorse for custom-built solutions, many teams just want the automation without the engineering project that comes with it. That’s where no-code platforms are changing the game, offering a much simpler route to the same destination.

Common Freshdesk ticket API examples

Let’s get into the practical stuff. Here are a few of the most common things people do with the Freshdesk ticket API. We’ll use Python for the code snippets since it’s a popular choice for this kind of thing.

Example 1: Fetching a list of tickets

Why you’d do this: Maybe the built-in Freshdesk reports don’t quite cut it for your needs. You might want to pull ticket data into a custom dashboard to track very specific metrics, analyze trends, or feed that information into a business intelligence tool.

To pull this off, you'd use the GET /api/v2/tickets endpoint. One small catch is that the API gives you data in "pages." You can't just grab every ticket at once. You have to ask for them page by page, like flipping through a book. You can also add parameters like updated_since to only fetch tickets that have been touched recently.

import requests  

import json  

# Your Freshdesk domain and API key  

domain = "your-domain"  

api_key = "YOUR_API_KEY"  

password = "X" # The password can be anything when using an API key  

# Start with the first page  

page = 1  

while True:  

    url = f"https://{domain}.freshdesk.com/api/v2/tickets?page={page}&per_page=100"  

    response = requests.get(url, auth=(api_key, password))  

    if response.status_code == 200:  

        tickets = response.json()  

        if not tickets:  

            # No more tickets to fetch  

            break  

        print(f"--- Page {page} ---")  

        for ticket in tickets:  

            print(f"Ticket #{ticket['id']}: {ticket['subject']}")  

        page += 1  

    else:  

        print(f"Failed to fetch tickets. Status code: {response.status_code}")  

        break  

A Freshdesk analytics dashboard, which can be populated using data from Freshdesk ticket API examples.

A different approach: Building and maintaining a custom reporting pipeline is a serious project. An integrated AI platform like eesel AI gives you advanced, actionable reports from day one. It doesn't just show you charts; it actually analyzes your tickets to find gaps in your knowledge base and points out the best opportunities for automation, all without you having to write a single line of code.

Example 2: Creating a new ticket

Why you’d do this: You want to automatically create a Freshdesk ticket when something important happens in another app. For instance, a critical alert from your server monitoring tool could create a high-priority ticket for your engineering team, or a form submission on your website could land directly in your sales team's queue.

For this, you'd use the POST /api/v2/tickets endpoint. You just need to send along a JSON object with all the ticket details, like the customer's email, subject, description, priority, and status.

import requests  

import json  

domain = "your-domain"  

api_key = "YOUR_API_KEY"  

password = "X"  

url = f"https://{domain}.freshdesk.com/api/v2/tickets"  

headers = { "Content-Type": "application/json" }  

ticket_data = {  

    "email": "customer@example.com",  

    "subject": "Website form submission: Demo Request",  

    "description": "A new lead has requested a demo through the website.",  

    "status": 2,  # Open  

    "priority": 3, # High  

    "group_id": 12345 # Your Sales group ID  

}  

response = requests.post(url, auth=(api_key, password), headers=headers, data=json.dumps(ticket_data))  

if response.status_code == 201:  

    print("Ticket created successfully!")  

    print(response.json())  

else:  

    print(f"Failed to create ticket. Status: {response.status_code}, Response: {response.text}")  

The Freshdesk ticket dashboard where a new ticket, created via one of the Freshdesk ticket API examples, would appear.

A different approach: Creating the ticket is the easy part. The real work is figuring out what happens next. Manually coding rules for routing, tagging, and responding can get complicated fast. eesel AI’s AI Triage handles all that "ticket hygiene" for you. It reads the new ticket and can instantly set the right priority, assign it to the correct team, add relevant tags, or even spot and close spam.

Example 3: Updating an existing ticket

Why you’d do this: You need to automatically change a ticket's status or add information based on an event in another system. For example, when an order ships from your Shopify store, you could automatically add a private note with the tracking info to the customer's ticket and change its status to "Pending."

Here, you’d use the PUT /api/v2/tickets/[id] endpoint, where [id] is just the ID number of the ticket you want to update. The data you send only needs to include the fields you're changing.

import requests  

import json  

domain = "your-domain"  

api_key = "YOUR_API_KEY"  

password = "X"  

ticket_id = 123 # The ID of the ticket to update  

url = f"https://{domain}.freshdesk.com/api/v2/tickets/{ticket_id}"  

headers = { "Content-Type": "application/json" }  

update_data = {  

    "status": 3, # Pending  

    "priority": 1 # Low  

}  

response = requests.put(url, auth=(api_key, password), headers=headers, data=json.dumps(update_data))  

if response.status_code == 200:  

    print(f"Ticket #{ticket_id} updated successfully!")  

else:  

    print(f"Failed to update ticket. Status: {response.status_code}, Response: {response.text}")  

A different approach: This is great for simple updates, but what if you need more? What if you wanted to check the order status in real time, add a public reply to the customer with the tracking number, and then resolve the ticket? That’s a multi-step workflow that gets tricky to code. With an AI Agent from eesel AI, you can build that entire sequence using a simple prompt editor. The AI can perform actions, call out to other systems for live data, and handle the whole conversation.

Automating workflows with Freshdesk ticket API examples

While calling the API directly is useful, real automation is about systems reacting to events as they happen, without you needing to manually run a script. This is where webhooks usually enter the picture.

Using Freshdesk automations and webhooks for advanced workflows

Freshdesk has built-in automation rules that are great for simple tasks. For more complex stuff, you can use webhooks. A webhook is just an automatic message that Freshdesk sends to another system whenever something specific happens, like a ticket's status changing.

But here’s the catch: a webhook just sends the data. It doesn't do anything on its own. You still need to build, host, and maintain a separate application to receive that data and run your logic. This adds another layer of complexity and cost to your setup.

The simpler, more powerful alternative: AI integration

This is where a lot of teams are moving now. Instead of building a separate service to listen for webhooks and run custom code, you can use an integrated AI platform that does all the heavy lifting for you.

eesel AI offers a one-click integration with Freshdesk that replaces the need to write API scripts or build webhook listeners. It's a full workflow engine that you can get running in minutes.

Here’s why that’s a big deal:

• No coding needed: You can build surprisingly complex, multi-step automations using a simple dashboard. No developers required.

• Custom actions: The AI isn't just stuck inside Freshdesk. It can make API calls to your other systems (like checking an order in Shopify) to get real-time information before it decides what to do next.

• Simulation mode: This is probably the coolest part. Before you set your automation live, you can test it on thousands of your past tickets. eesel AI's simulation shows you exactly how your AI agent will perform, what its resolution rate will be, and where it might get stuck. This lets you deploy with confidence, rather than just crossing your fingers.

Understanding pricing and limitations

Here's another practical thing to keep in mind: cost and scale. Your access to the Freshdesk API is tied directly to your pricing plan, which sets your rate limit.

Plan	API Rate Limit (per minute)
Growth	200
Pro	400
Enterprise	700

What does this actually mean for you? If your company gets a lot of tickets, or if your automations are chatty and make several API calls per ticket, you could hit that limit pretty easily. When that happens, your integrations just stop working until the clock resets, which can cause delays for your customers.

This sometimes forces growing companies into a pricier Freshdesk plan just to get higher API limits, even if they don’t need the other features. It’s a bit of a hidden cost when you build your own integrations.

Go live in minutes, not months, with eesel AI

Building custom API integrations is a real project. It takes developer time to plan, build, test, and deploy. And the work never really stops, you have to host the code and keep it updated forever.

With eesel AI, you can often get better results in a tiny fraction of the time.

• It's actually self-serve: You can sign up and launch a working AI agent in a few minutes on your own. No need to sit through a sales demo if you don't want to.

• One-click integration: Forget about copying and pasting API keys. eesel AI connects directly and securely to your Freshdesk account.

• Total control: You don't have to automate your entire helpdesk overnight. Start with one simple use case, like "Where is my order?" questions. As you see how it works and get comfortable, you can gradually give the AI more to handle.

eesel AI isn't just a replacement for the API; it's a faster and more accessible way to solve the same problems that lead people to the API in the first place.

Final thoughts on using the Freshdesk ticket API

The Freshdesk ticket API is a solid tool if you have the developer resources to build and maintain custom integrations. It gives you the freedom to connect your helpdesk to just about anything. But that freedom comes with the ongoing cost of developer time, maintenance, and API limits that can be a headache as you grow.

For most teams who just want to automate repetitive work and free up their agents, modern AI platforms offer a much more direct path. They manage the technical complexity for you, so you can focus on designing great customer experiences, not managing infrastructure.

Ready to see what you can automate without writing any code? Try eesel AI for free and see how much you can get done in the next 10 minutes.