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Create a contact

POST
/v1/contacts
const contact = await bird.contacts.create({
  email: "jane@acme.com",
  first_name: "Jane",
});
console.log(contact.id); // "con_…"
Response201
{
  "id": "con_01krdgeqcxet5s7t44vh8rt9mg",
  "email": "alice@acme.com",
  "phone_number": "+31612345678",
  "audiences": [
    {
      "id": "adn_01krdgeqcxet5s7t44vh8rt9mg",
      "name": "Newsletter subscribers"
    }
  ],
  "created_at": "2026-05-20T09:14:52Z",
  "updated_at": "2026-05-25T16:42:01Z"
}

Creates a contact in the workspace, identified by an email address, a phone number, or both; at least one is required. Email is stored trimmed and lowercased, and phone in its canonical international form. Creating a second contact with the same email or phone number, or reusing another contact's external_id, returns a conflict error.

To create or update many contacts in one request, or to write a contact without knowing whether the address already exists, use Create or update contacts in bulk instead.

Request Payload

email
string

The contact's email address. Trimmed and lowercased before it is stored and checked for uniqueness. Unique within the workspace. Supply an email address, a phone number, or both.

phone_number
string

The contact's phone number in E.164 format, including the leading + and country code. Spaces and punctuation are accepted and stripped; the number is stored in its canonical form, which may differ from what you send, and is unique within the workspace. An empty string is treated as if the field were omitted. Supply an email address, a phone number, or both.

first_name
string

The contact's first name.

last_name
string

The contact's last name.

external_id
string

Your own identifier for this contact, such as a user ID in your system. Unique within the workspace when set.

data
object

Custom property values for this contact. Each key must be a registered contact property, including an archived one. Each value must match the property's declared type: string, number, boolean, or RFC 3339 datetime. Strings can contain up to 500 characters, and a null value is ignored. An unregistered key returns a validation error. The serialized data is limited to 2 KB.

Response Payload

id
string
required

ID of the contact, accepted by every operation that takes a contact_id.

email
nullable string
required

The contact's email address, in its stored form, trimmed and lowercased before uniqueness is checked. Unique within the workspace. null when the contact has no email address.

phone_number
nullable string
required

The contact's phone number in normalized international form: a leading + and four to 15 digits. We normalize formatting but do not verify the number against numbering-plan metadata. The number is unique within the workspace. Because carriers recycle disconnected numbers, use external_id as the durable key for your own records. null when the contact has no phone number.

first_name
nullable string

The contact's first name. Available in broadcast templates as bird.contact.first_name.

last_name
nullable string

The contact's last name. Available in broadcast templates as bird.contact.last_name.

external_id
nullable string

Your own identifier for this contact, such as a user ID in your system. Unique within the workspace when set.

data
object

Custom property values for this contact, available in broadcast templates as bird.contact.<key>. Each key is a property created via the contact properties API, and each value is a string, number, boolean, or RFC 3339 datetime matching the property's declared type (strings up to 500 characters). Total size is capped at 2 KB serialized. Values stored under a property that was later archived remain readable here.

audiences
array of object

The audiences this contact belongs to, most-recently-joined first. Only present when listing contacts; omitted from every other contact operation.

Show child attributes
audiences.id
string
required

ID of the referenced audience.

audiences.name
string
required

The audience's display name.

created_at
string
required
updated_at
string
required

Related resources

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