pip install azure-identity
Prerequisites
An Azure subscription
Python 3.9 or a recent version of Python 3 (this library doesn't support end-of-life versions)
Authenticate during local development
When debugging and executing code locally, it's typical for developers to use their own accounts for authenticating calls to Azure services. The Azure Identity library supports authenticating through developer tools to simplify local development.
Authenticate via the Azure CLI
DefaultAzureCredential and AzureCliCredential can authenticate as the user signed in to the Azure CLI. To sign in to the Azure CLI, run az login. On a system with a default web browser, the Azure CLI launches the browser to authenticate a user.
When no default browser is available, az login uses the device code authentication flow. This flow can also be selected manually by running az login --use-device-code.
Authenticate via the Azure Developer CLI
Developers coding outside of an IDE can also use the Azure Developer CLI to authenticate. Applications using DefaultAzureCredential or AzureDeveloperCliCredential can then use this account to authenticate calls in their application when running locally.
To authenticate with the Azure Developer CLI, run the command azd auth login. For users running on a system with a default web browser, the Azure Developer CLI launches the browser to authenticate the user.
For systems without a default web browser, the azd auth login --use-device-code command uses the device code authentication flow.
Authenticate via Azure PowerShell
Developers coding outside of an IDE can also use Azure PowerShell to authenticate. Applications using DefaultAzureCredential or AzurePowerShellCredential can then use this account to authenticate calls in their application when running locally.
To authenticate with Azure PowerShell, run the Connect-AzAccount cmdlet. By default, like the Azure CLI, Connect-AzAccount launches the default web browser to authenticate the user. For systems without a default web browser, the Connect-AzAccount uses the device code authentication flow. The user can also force Azure PowerShell to use the device code flow rather than launching a browser by specifying the -UseDeviceAuthentication argument.
Key concepts
Credentials
A credential is a class that contains or can obtain the data needed for a service client to authenticate requests. Service clients across the Azure SDK accept a credential instance when they're constructed, and use that credential to authenticate requests.
The Azure Identity library focuses on OAuth authentication with Microsoft Entra ID. It offers various credential classes capable of acquiring a Microsoft Entra access token. See the Credential classes section for a list of this library's credential classes.
DefaultAzureCredential
DefaultAzureCredential simplifies authentication while developing apps that deploy to Azure by combining credentials used in Azure hosting environments with credentials used in local development. For more information, see DefaultAzureCredential overview.
Continuation policy
As of version 1.14.0, DefaultAzureCredential attempts to authenticate with all developer credentials until one succeeds, regardless of any errors previous developer credentials experienced. For example, a developer credential may attempt to get a token and fail, so DefaultAzureCredential will continue to the next credential in the flow. Deployed service credentials stop the flow with a thrown exception if they're able to attempt token retrieval, but don't receive one. Prior to version 1.14.0, developer credentials would similarly stop the authentication flow if token retrieval failed, but this is no longer the case.
This allows for trying all of the developer credentials on your machine while having predictable deployed behavior.
Examples
The following examples are provided:
Authenticate with DefaultAzureCredential
Define a custom authentication flow with ChainedTokenCredential
Async credentials
Authenticate with DefaultAzureCredential
More details on configuring your environment to use DefaultAzureCredential can be found in the class's reference documentation.
This example demonstrates authenticating the BlobServiceClient from the azure-storage-blob library using DefaultAzureCredential.
from azure.identity import DefaultAzureCredential
from azure.storage.blob import BlobServiceClient
default_credential = DefaultAzureCredential()
client = BlobServiceClient(account_url, credential=default_credential)
Enable interactive authentication with DefaultAzureCredential
By default, interactive authentication is disabled in DefaultAzureCredential and can be enabled with a keyword argument:
DefaultAzureCredential(exclude_interactive_browser_credential=False)
When enabled, DefaultAzureCredential falls back to interactively authenticating via the system's default web browser when no other credential is available.
Specify a user-assigned managed identity with DefaultAzureCredential
Many Azure hosts allow the assignment of a user-assigned managed identity. To configure DefaultAzureCredential to authenticate a user-assigned managed identity, use the managed_identity_client_id keyword argument:
DefaultAzureCredential(managed_identity_client_id=client_id)
Alternatively, set the environment variable AZURE_CLIENT_ID to the identity's client ID.
Define a custom authentication flow with ChainedTokenCredential
While DefaultAzureCredential is generally the quickest way to authenticate apps for Azure, you can create a customized chain of credentials to be considered. ChainedTokenCredential enables users to combine multiple credential instances to define a customized chain of credentials. For more information, see ChainedTokenCredential overview.
Async credentials
This library includes a set of async APIs. To use the async credentials in azure.identity.aio, you must first install an async transport, such as aiohttp. For more information, see azure-core documentation.
Async credentials should be closed when they're no longer needed. Each async credential is an async context manager and defines an async close method. For example:
from azure.identity.aio import DefaultAzureCredential
# call close when the credential is no longer needed
credential = DefaultAzureCredential()
await credential.close()
# alternatively, use the credential as an async context manager
credential = DefaultAzureCredential()
async with credential:
This example demonstrates authenticating the asynchronous SecretClient from azure-keyvault-secrets with an asynchronous credential.
from azure.identity.aio import DefaultAzureCredential
from azure.keyvault.secrets.aio import SecretClient
default_credential = DefaultAzureCredential()
client = SecretClient("https://my-vault.vault.azure.net", default_credential)
Managed identity support
Managed identity authentication is supported via either DefaultAzureCredential or ManagedIdentityCredential directly for the following Azure services:
Azure App Service and Azure Functions
Azure Arc
Azure Cloud Shell
Azure Kubernetes Service
Azure Service Fabric
Azure Virtual Machines
Azure Virtual Machines Scale Sets
Examples
These examples demonstrate authenticating SecretClient from the azure-keyvault-secrets library with ManagedIdentityCredential.
Authenticate with a user-assigned managed identity
To authenticate with a user-assigned managed identity, you must specify one of the following IDs for the managed identity.
Client ID
from azure.identity import ManagedIdentityCredential
from azure.keyvault.secrets import SecretClient
credential = ManagedIdentityCredential(client_id="managed_identity_client_id")
client = SecretClient("https://my-vault.vault.azure.net", credential)
Resource ID
from azure.identity import ManagedIdentityCredential
from azure.keyvault.secrets import SecretClient
resource_id = "/subscriptions/<id>/resourceGroups/<rg>/providers/Microsoft.ManagedIdentity/userAssignedIdentities/<mi-name>"
credential = ManagedIdentityCredential(identity_config={"resource_id": resource_id})
client = SecretClient("https://my-vault.vault.azure.net", credential)
Object ID
from azure.identity import ManagedIdentityCredential
from azure.keyvault.secrets import SecretClient
credential = ManagedIdentityCredential(identity_config={"object_id": "managed_identity_object_id"})
client = SecretClient("https://my-vault.vault.azure.net", credential)
Authenticate with a system-assigned managed identity
from azure.identity import ManagedIdentityCredential
from azure.keyvault.secrets import SecretClient
credential = ManagedIdentityCredential()
client = SecretClient("https://my-vault.vault.azure.net", credential)
Cloud configuration
Credentials default to authenticating to the Microsoft Entra endpoint for Azure Public Cloud. To access resources in other clouds, such as Azure Government or a private cloud, configure credentials with the authority argument. AzureAuthorityHosts defines authorities for well-known clouds:
from azure.identity import AzureAuthorityHosts
DefaultAzureCredential(authority=AzureAuthorityHosts.AZURE_GOVERNMENT)
If the authority for your cloud isn't listed in AzureAuthorityHosts, you can explicitly specify its URL:
DefaultAzureCredential(authority="https://login.partner.microsoftonline.cn")
As an alternative to specifying the authority argument, you can also set the AZURE_AUTHORITY_HOST environment variable to the URL of your cloud's authority. This approach is useful when configuring multiple credentials to authenticate to the same cloud:
AZURE_AUTHORITY_HOST=https://login.partner.microsoftonline.cn
Not all credentials require this configuration. Credentials that authenticate through a development tool, such as AzureCliCredential, use that tool's configuration.
Credential classes
Credential chains
Credential
Usage
DefaultAzureCredential
Provides a simplified authentication experience to quickly start developing applications run in Azure.
ChainedTokenCredential
Allows users to define custom authentication flows composing multiple credentials.
Authenticate Azure-hosted applications
Credential
Usage
EnvironmentCredential
Authenticates a service principal or user via credential information specified in environment variables.
ManagedIdentityCredential
Authenticates the managed identity of an Azure resource.
WorkloadIdentityCredential
Supports Microsoft Entra Workload ID on Kubernetes.
Authenticate service principals
Credential
Usage
Reference
CertificateCredential
Authenticates a service principal using a certificate.
Service principal authentication
ClientAssertionCredential
Authenticates a service principal using a signed client assertion.
ClientSecretCredential
Authenticates a service principal using a secret.
Service principal authentication
Authenticate users
Credential
Usage
Reference
Notes
AuthorizationCodeCredential
Authenticates a user with a previously obtained authorization code.
OAuth2 authentication code
DeviceCodeCredential
Interactively authenticates a user on devices with limited UI.
Device code authentication
InteractiveBrowserCredential
Interactively authenticates a user with the default system browser.
OAuth2 authentication code
InteractiveBrowserCredential doesn't support GitHub Codespaces. As a workaround, use DeviceCodeCredential.
OnBehalfOfCredential
Propagates the delegated user identity and permissions through the request chain.
On-behalf-of authentication
AzureCliCredential
Authenticates in a development environment with the Azure CLI.
Azure CLI authentication
AzureDeveloperCliCredential
Authenticates in a development environment with the Azure Developer CLI.
Azure Developer CLI Reference
AzurePowerShellCredential
Authenticates in a development environment with the Azure PowerShell.
Azure PowerShell authentication
Environment variables
DefaultAzureCredential and EnvironmentCredential can be configured with environment variables. Each type of authentication requires values for specific
variables:
Service principal with secret
Variable name
Value
AZURE_CLIENT_CERTIFICATE_PATH
path to a PEM or PKCS12 certificate file including private key
AZURE_CLIENT_CERTIFICATE_PASSWORD
password of the certificate file, if any
AZURE_CLIENT_SEND_CERTIFICATE_CHAIN
If True, the credential sends the public certificate chain in the x5c header of each token request's JWT. This is required for Subject Name/Issuer (SNI) authentication. Defaults to False. There's a known limitation that async SNI authentication isn't supported.
Configuration is attempted in the preceding order. For example, if values for a client secret and certificate are both present, the client secret is used.
Continuous Access Evaluation
As of version 1.14.0, accessing resources protected by Continuous Access Evaluation (CAE) is possible on a per-request basis. This behavior can be enabled by setting the enable_cae keyword argument to True in the credential's get_token method. CAE isn't supported for developer and managed identity credentials.
Token caching
Token caching is a feature provided by the Azure Identity library that allows apps to:
Cache tokens in memory (default) or on disk (opt-in).
Improve resilience and performance.
Reduce the number of requests made to Microsoft Entra ID to obtain access tokens.
The Azure Identity library offers both in-memory and persistent disk caching. For more information, see the token caching documentation.
Brokered authentication
An authentication broker is an application that runs on a user’s machine and manages the authentication handshakes and token maintenance for connected accounts. Currently, only the Windows Web Account Manager (WAM) is supported. To enable support, use the azure-identity-broker package. For details on authenticating using WAM, see the broker plugin documentation.
Troubleshooting
See the troubleshooting guide for details on how to diagnose various failure scenarios.
Error handling
Credentials raise CredentialUnavailableError when they're unable to attempt authentication because they lack required data or state. For example, EnvironmentCredential raises this exception when its configuration is incomplete.
Credentials raise azure.core.exceptions.ClientAuthenticationError when they fail to authenticate. ClientAuthenticationError has a message attribute, which describes why authentication failed. When raised by DefaultAzureCredential or ChainedTokenCredential, the message collects error messages from each credential in the chain.
For more information on handling specific Microsoft Entra ID errors, see the Microsoft Entra ID error code documentation.
Logging
This library uses the standard logging library for logging. Credentials log basic information, including HTTP sessions (URLs, headers, etc.) at INFO level. These log entries don't contain authentication secrets.
Detailed DEBUG-level logging, including request/response bodies and header values, isn't enabled by default. It can be enabled with the logging_enable argument. For example:
credential = DefaultAzureCredential(logging_enable=True)
CAUTION: DEBUG-level logs from credentials contain sensitive information.
These logs must be protected to avoid compromising account security.
Next steps
Client library support
Client and management libraries listed on the Azure SDK release page that support Microsoft Entra authentication accept credentials from this library. You can learn more about using these libraries in their documentation, which is linked from the release page.
Known issues
This library doesn't support Azure AD B2C.
For other open issues, refer to the library's GitHub repository.
Provide feedback
If you encounter bugs or have suggestions, open an issue.
Contributing
This project welcomes contributions and suggestions. Most contributions require you to agree to a Contributor License Agreement (CLA) declaring that you have the right to, and actually do, grant us the rights to use your contribution. For details, visit https://cla.microsoft.com.
When you submit a pull request, a CLA-bot will automatically determine whether you need to provide a CLA and decorate the PR appropriately (e.g., label, comment). Simply follow the instructions provided by the bot. You'll only need to do this once across all repos using our CLA.
This project has adopted the Microsoft Open Source Code of Conduct. For more information, see the Code of Conduct FAQ or contact opencode@microsoft.com with any additional questions or comments.
