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Sign into Azure with a service principal using the Azure CLI

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Service principals are accounts not tied to any particular user, which can have permissions on them assigned through predefined roles. Authenticating with a service principal is the best way to write secure scripts or programs, allowing you to apply both permissions restrictions and locally stored static credential information. To learn more about service principals, see Work with Azure service principals using the Azure CLI.

To sign in with a service principal, you need:

  • The URL or name associated with the service principal
  • The service principal password, or the X509 certificate used to create the service principal in PEM format
  • The tenant associated with the service principal, as either an .onmicrosoft.com domain or Azure object ID

Note two important facts when working with service principals and the Azure CLI:

  • A CERTIFICATE must be appended to the PRIVATE KEY within a PEM file. For an example of a PEM file format, see Certificate-based authentication.

  • If your service principal uses a certificate that is stored in Key Vault, that certificate's private key must be available without signing in to Azure. To retrieve the certificate for az login, see Retrieve certificate from Key Vault.

az login --service-principal -u <app-id> -p <password-or-cert> --tenant <tenant>

Important

If you want to avoid displaying your password on console and are using az login interactively, use the read -s command under bash.

read -sp "Azure password: " AZ_PASS && echo && az login --service-principal -u <app-id> -p $AZ_PASS --tenant <tenant>

Under PowerShell, use the Get-Credential cmdlet.

$AzCred = Get-Credential -UserName <app-id>
az login --service-principal -u $AzCred.UserName -p $AzCred.GetNetworkCredential().Password --tenant <tenant>

See also