Azure Identity client library for Python

The Azure Identity library provides Microsoft Entra ID (formerly Azure Active Directory) token authentication support across the Azure SDK. It provides a set of TokenCredential/SupportsTokenInfo implementations, which can be used to construct Azure SDK clients that support Microsoft Entra token authentication.

Source code | Package (PyPI) | Package (Conda) | API reference documentation | Microsoft Entra ID documentation

Getting started

Install the package

Install Azure Identity with pip:

pip install azure-identity

Prerequisites

  • An Azure subscription

  • Python 3.8 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 Visual Studio Code

Developers using Visual Studio Code can use the Azure Account extension to authenticate via the editor. Apps using DefaultAzureCredential or VisualStudioCodeCredential can then use this account to authenticate calls in their app when running locally.

To authenticate in Visual Studio Code, ensure the Azure Account extension is installed. Once installed, open the Command Palette and run the Azure: Sign In command.

It’s a known issue that VisualStudioCodeCredential doesn’t work with Azure Account extension versions newer than 0.9.11. A long-term fix to this problem is in progress. In the meantime, consider authenticating via the Azure CLI.

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.

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.

Note about VisualStudioCodeCredential

Due to a known issue, VisualStudioCodeCredential has been removed from the DefaultAzureCredential token chain. When the issue is resolved in a future release, this change will be reverted.

Examples

The following examples are provided:

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:

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. Similarly, VisualStudioCodeCredential accepts an authority argument but defaults to the authority matching VS Code’s “Azure: Cloud” setting.

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

AzurePipelinesCredential

Supports Microsoft Entra Workload ID on Azure Pipelines.

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

UsernamePasswordCredential

Authenticates a user with a username and password (doesn’t support multifactor authentication).

Username + password authentication

Authenticate via development tools

Credential

Usage

Reference

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

VisualStudioCodeCredential

Authenticates as the user signed in to the Visual Studio Code Azure Account extension.

VS Code Azure Account extension

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_ID

ID of a Microsoft Entra application

AZURE_TENANT_ID

ID of the application’s Microsoft Entra tenant

AZURE_CLIENT_SECRET

one of the application’s client secrets

Service principal with certificate

Variable name

Value

Required

AZURE_CLIENT_ID

ID of a Microsoft Entra application

X

AZURE_TENANT_ID

ID of the application’s Microsoft Entra tenant

X

AZURE_CLIENT_CERTIFICATE_PATH

path to a PEM or PKCS12 certificate file including private key

X

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.

Username and password

Variable name

Value

AZURE_CLIENT_ID

ID of a Microsoft Entra application

AZURE_USERNAME

a username (usually an email address)

AZURE_PASSWORD

that user’s password

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.

Impressions

Indices and tables

Developer Documentation