Securing API Keys and Secrets in Frontend Applications

Anything shipped to the browser is readable. Minification, obfuscation, and environment variable prefixes do not protect secrets. If a value reaches the client bundle, an attacker can extract it by opening DevTools. Treating this as a fundamental constraint changes how you architect API access.

The most reliable approach: never send the secret to the client. Route all third-party API calls through your own backend, which holds the secret server-side.