api-keys.md

applies_to	deployment serverless eck ess ece self ga ga ga ga ga
navigation_title	API keys
products	id elastic-stack id elasticsearch id kibana id cloud-hosted id cloud-enterprise id cloud-kubernetes id cloud-serverless

Elastic API keys

API keys are security mechanisms used to authenticate and authorize access to your deployments and {{es}} resources.

They ensure that only authorized users or applications interact with these resources through Elastic APIs.

For example, if you extract data from an {{es}} cluster on a daily basis, you might create an API key tied to your credentials, configure it with minimum access, and then put the API credentials into a cron job. Or you might create API keys to automate ingestion of new data from remote sources, without a live user interaction.

Depending on the APIs you want to use, the API keys to create are different, and managed at different locations:

Type	Applicability	Purpose
	{applies_to}stack: ga	• Use {{es}} and {{kib}} APIs in stack-versioned deployments, including ECH, ECE, ECK, and self-managed clusters. • Manage remote cluster connections.
	{applies_to}serverless: ga	Use {{es}} {{serverless-short}} and {{kib}} {{serverless-short}} APIs.
	{applies_to}ess: ga {applies_to}serverless: ga	• Manage your {{ecloud}} organization, {{ech}} deployments, and {{serverless-short}} projects using the {{ecloud}} and {{ecloud}} {{serverless-short}} APIs. • {applies_to}serverless: ga Use {{es}} {{serverless-short}} and {{kib}} {{serverless-short}} APIs. Using {{ecloud}} keys for project-level API access allows you to create keys that can interact with multiple projects, and manage API access centrally from the {{ecloud}} console.
	{applies_to}ece: ga	Manage your {{ece}} platform and deployments using the {{ece}} API.