Access-Control-Allow-Origin

The Access-Control-Allow-Origin response header indicates whether the response can be shared with requesting code from the given origin.

Syntax

Access-Control-Allow-Origin: *
Access-Control-Allow-Origin: <origin>
Access-Control-Allow-Origin: null

Directives

*

For requests without credentials, the literal value "*" can be specified, as a wildcard; the value tells browsers to allow requesting code from any origin to access the resource. Attempting to use the wildcard with credentials will result in an error.

<origin>

Specifies an origin. Only a single origin can be specified.

null

Specifies the origin "null".

Note: null should not be used: "It may seem safe to return Access-Control-Allow-Origin: "null", but the serialization of the Origin of any resource that uses a non-hierarchical scheme (such as data: or file:) and sandboxed documents is defined to be "null". Many User Agents will grant such documents access to a response with an Access-Control-Allow-Origin: "null" header, and any origin can create a hostile document with a "null" Origin. The "null" value for the ACAO header should therefore be avoided."

Examples

A response that tells the browser to allow code from any origin to access a resource will include the following:

Access-Control-Allow-Origin: *

A response that tells the browser to allow requesting code from the origin https://developer.mozilla.org to access a resource will include the following:

Access-Control-Allow-Origin: https://developer.mozilla.org

Limiting the possible Access-Control-Allow-Origin values to a set of allowed origins requires code on the server side to check the value of the Origin request header, compare that to a list of allowed origins, and then if the Origin value is in the list, to set the Access-Control-Allow-Origin value to the same value as the Origin value.

CORS and caching

If the server sends a response with an Access-Control-Allow-Origin value that is an explicit origin (rather than the "*" wildcard), then the response should also include a Vary response header with the value Origin — to indicate to browsers that server responses can differ based on the value of the Origin request header.

Access-Control-Allow-Origin: https://developer.mozilla.org
Vary: Origin

Specifications

Browser compatibility

The compatibility table in this page is generated from structured data. If you'd like to contribute to the data, please check out https://github.com/mdn/browser-compat-data and send us a pull request.

See also

• Origin
• Vary
• Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS)