Developer sandbox

The examina.io developer sandbox is an isolated test tenant hosted at https://sandbox.examina.io. It uses the production application infrastructure without sharing your live organization's exams, examinees, results, API keys, webhooks, or billing state.

Use it to validate provisioning, assignment, launch-session, results, and webhook integrations before sending live traffic.

Open your sandbox

Every live organization can use one sandbox. Any verified organization user can open it:

1. Sign in to the live dashboard.
2. Open Settings → Developer Sandbox.
3. Select Open sandbox.

The first visit creates the isolated sandbox automatically. examina.io then signs you in at sandbox.examina.io with a short-lived, one-time browser handoff, so there is normally no second login screen. The handoff contains no password or reusable session credential and cannot be replayed after use.

The persistent TEST MODE banner and test styling indicate that the current dashboard is using sandbox data. There is no environment toggle: the hostname is the environment boundary.

Create a test API key

From sandbox Settings, create a scoped test key. Test tokens begin with exm_test. and are shown only once. Send them only to the sandbox API base URL:

curl --request GET \
  --header "Authorization: Bearer $EXAMINA_TEST_API_KEY" \
  --header "Accept: application/json" \
  "https://sandbox.examina.io/api/v1/exams"

The boundary is enforced in both directions:

• exm_test. keys work only at sandbox.examina.io and only for the linked sandbox tenant.
• exm_live. keys and legacy Basic Authentication are rejected by the sandbox.
• Test keys are rejected by the live API.

Signed sandbox webhook events include "livemode": false and "environment": "test", allowing receivers to keep test events out of live downstream workflows.

Use the same v1 paths, request bodies, scopes, and idempotency behavior shown in the API reference.

Sandbox limits

The shared-infrastructure sandbox is intentionally small and free:

Resource	Limit
Examinees	1
Active exams	3
Groups	3
Exam attempts	5 per 30-day period
Concurrent exam sessions	1
Completed-result retention	30 days
API requests	120 per test key per minute
Sandbox resets	3 per day

Sandbox attempts never reserve funds, consume paid-plan allowances, write usage ledgers, or generate billable feature charges. Reconnecting to the same attempt does not consume another allowance slot.

Paid external features such as live proctoring and identity verification are not available in the sandbox. Email delivery and recording are disabled.

Reset test data

An Administrator can use Reset sandbox from sandbox Settings up to three times per day. Reset removes test exams, examinees, groups, assignments, results, webhook configuration, delivery records, and uploaded sandbox files.

Reset deliberately preserves:

• the sandbox tenant;
• scoped exm_test. keys; and
• the current 30-day attempt allowance usage.

Preserving the allowance prevents reset from becoming a way to bypass the free usage limit. Revoke keys separately when they are no longer needed.

Data retention and indexing

Completed sandbox results are automatically removed after 30 days. Sandbox pages send X-Robots-Tag: noindex, nofollow; test tenant content is not intended for search indexing. Public developer documentation remains indexable at docs.examina.io.

Recommended integration workflow

1. Build against https://sandbox.examina.io/api/v1 with an exm_test. key.
2. Exercise success, validation, idempotency, retry, and webhook-signature paths.
3. Confirm your integration handles sandbox quota responses without retry loops.
4. Create a separate exm_live. key with the minimum required scopes.
5. Change both the base URL and secret through environment-specific deployment configuration; never transform a test token into a live token.

For copy-ready requests and a complete first test, follow the sandbox API quickstart.

Troubleshoot access

If the automatic handoff expires or has already been used, return to the live Developer Sandbox settings page and select Open sandbox again. A handoff expires after 90 seconds. Direct sign-in at sandbox.examina.io remains available as a fallback.

If API calls return HTTP 429, wait for the Retry-After period before retrying. Use bounded exponential backoff and do not start parallel retry loops.