Elastic API keys

API keys are security mechanisms used to authenticate and authorize access to your deployments and Elasticsearch resources.

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

For example, if you extract data from an Elasticsearch 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
Elasticsearch API keys	The Elastic Stack includes Elastic's core products such as Elasticsearch, Kibana, Logstash, and Beats. Availability Generally available This functionality is generally available and ready for production usage. Unless stated otherwise on the page, this functionality is available when your Elastic Stack is deployed on Elastic Cloud Hosted, Elastic Cloud Enterprise, Elastic Cloud on Kubernetes, and self-managed environments. This documentation corresponds to the latest patch available for each minor version. If you're not using the latest patch, check the release notes for changes.	• Use Elasticsearch and Kibana APIs in stack-versioned deployments, including ECH, ECE, ECK, and self-managed clusters. • Manage remote cluster connections.
Serverless project API keys	Elastic Cloud Serverless projects are autoscaled environments, fully managed by Elastic and available on Elastic Cloud. Availability Generally available This functionality is generally available and ready for production usage. Serverless interfaces and procedures might differ from classic Elastic Stack deployments.	Use Elasticsearch Serverless and Kibana Serverless APIs.
Elastic Cloud API keys	Elastic Cloud Hosted lets you manage and configure one or more deployments of the versioned Elastic Stack, hosted on Elastic Cloud. Availability Generally available This functionality is generally available and ready for production usage. Elastic Cloud Serverless projects are autoscaled environments, fully managed by Elastic and available on Elastic Cloud. Availability Generally available This functionality is generally available and ready for production usage. Serverless interfaces and procedures might differ from classic Elastic Stack deployments.	• Manage your Elastic Cloud organization, Elastic Cloud Hosted deployments, and Serverless projects using the Elastic Cloud and Elastic Cloud Serverless. • Manage billing for your organizations using the Elastic Cloud Billing APIs. • Elastic Cloud Serverless projects are autoscaled environments, fully managed by Elastic and available on Elastic Cloud. Availability Generally available This functionality is generally available and ready for production usage. Serverless interfaces and procedures might differ from classic Elastic Stack deployments. Use Elasticsearch Serverless and Kibana Serverless APIs. Using Elastic Cloud keys for project-level API access allows you to create keys that can interact with multiple projects, and manage API access centrally from the Elastic Cloud console.
Elastic Cloud Enterprise API keys	Elastic Cloud Enterprise is a self-managed orchestration platform for deploying and managing the Elastic Stack at scale. Availability Generally available This functionality is generally available and ready for production usage. This documentation corresponds to the latest patch available for each minor version. If you're not using the latest patch, check the release notes for changes.	Manage your Elastic Cloud Enterprise platform and deployments using the Elastic Cloud Enterprise API.