Access to the Airbyte API is available by creating an access token through the UI.

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If you're looking for information on the API keys from portal.airbyte.com, please see this page: portal.airbyte.com deprecation

To create an Application, you must have access to the Airbyte UI.

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User Association
Applications created via the settings page are associated with the user you log in as. That means the user you're logged in as when you create an Application dictates what permissions you'll have when interacting with the Airbyte API once you've generated your access token and are using it to make requests.

Once logged into the Airbyte UI, go to Settings -> Account -> Applications.

Click "Create an application".
Name your application.

The Application that is created will give you a Client ID and Client Secret. The Client Secret can be exposed by clicking on the icon next to the secret.
Click Generate Access Token to create an access token. This can be used to do a quick test. You can alternatively use the client_id and client_secret to retrieve an access token using the /v1/applications/token endpoint.

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Access tokens are short-lived, and are only valid for 3 minutes. We recommend fetching a new token before each request.
The Terraform Provider/SDKs properly handle this fetching for you if you initialize the Provider/SDK with the Client Credentials grant type using your Application's client_id and client_secret.

Authentication in Self-Managed Enterprise

Airbyte Enterprise users can follow the same instructions as above. The only difference is that the tokens are slightly longer lived (24 hours).

Authentication in Self-Managed Community (OSS)

In Self-Managed Community, authentication is now enabled by default. The same instructions above apply, however only a single application can be created.

If Airbyte was deployed with authentication disabled, the Airbyte API is accessible without any authentication.