In an Okta environment, it's often necessary to connect an external service to the Okta API. To authenticate requests, we need a token with the appropriate scopes, depending on which resources we need access to in Okta. Some developers take the easy route by configuring an API token—which has its advantages but also significant limitations and risks.
What I mean is, there’s probably a better way to obtain that precious token. This article aims to outline the characteristics of the two primary methods (at least the ones I know so far!) since this topic frequently comes up when customers are trying to follow best practices.
For readability—and because lists help me make informed decisions—I’ve broken the use case into two opposing approaches. The right choice for your business case will depend on your specific needs.
API Tokens vs. API Service Apps
API Tokens (via Okta User accounts)
Pros:
- Easier and faster to implement for singular use cases
- Can be configured with network restrictions
Cons:
- API tokens are secrets and should be treated like passwords
- Tokens remain valid only if the user who created them is active
- Issued for a specific user, meaning all requests act on behalf of that user
- Always constrained to the admin roles of the user who created them, requiring a dedicated service account for each use case
- Stale Active User with admin permissions, that can login
- Typically have a long lifespan: valid for 30 days and auto-renewing with API usage. If inactive for 30+ days, the token is revoked and cannot be reused
- No support for automations, API tokens cannot be created or managed via the Okta API—only through the Admin UI
- Token secrets cannot be rotated
- The user will first need to login as a Super Admin to manually create an API token, and then demoted if the token should have other role than Super Admin
- Introduces management overhead and may occupy a license seat
API Service Apps
Pros:
- No user context—ideal for machine-to-machine (M2M) use cases
- Uses the OAuth 2.0 standard for authentication
- Access tokens can be requested at any time until the app is deactivated
- Easily scalable across multiple use cases
- Token lifetime can be adjusted based on security needs
- Secret keys can be easily rotated
- Can be automated via scripts and created through the Okta API
Cons:
- Not all third-party services support the OAuth 2.0 flow
- JWTs (JSON Web Tokens) need to be verified and validated
Both methods
Pros:
- Can be assigned admin permissions with role and resource configurations
- Configurable rate limits
Further Reading
For more details, check out Okta's official documentation:
Additionally, this article, written by an Okta developer, offers great insights into phasing out static API tokens in favour of OAuth 2.0. It even expands on the topic beyond Okta-specific configurations, making it a valuable read.
About the author
Roxana Martins is an IAM Engineer at Distology Studios and certified Okta Administrator with extensive experience in Process Automation technologies including Okta Workflows.