---
title: "Authentication"
sidebarTitle: "Authentication"
description: "Establishing who is calling: API keys and identity provider integration."
icon: key
keywords: ["authentication", "api key", "oidc", "identity"]
---

<Badge color="red">Enterprise</Badge>

This page describes a LanceDB Enterprise capability. The embedded form
of LanceDB has no server to provide it -- see
[Architecture](/architecture) for what differs between the two.

A deployment authenticates every request before
[authorization](/governance/authorization) decides what it may do.

```python
db = lancedb.connect("db://my-database", api_key="...", region="us-east-1")
```

An API key belongs in the environment rather than in source. See
[Database](/management/database#deployment) for the connection options.

Embedded LanceDB has nothing to authenticate to -- your process opens the files
directly, and the object store's own credentials are the only gate.