Access-Control-Allow-Credentials

Baseline Widely available

This feature is well established and works across many devices and browser versions. It’s been available across browsers since July 2015.

The HTTP Access-Control-Allow-Credentials response header tells browsers whether the server allows credentials to be included in cross-origin HTTP requests.

Credentials include cookies, Transport Layer Security (TLS) client certificates, or authentication headers containing a username and password. By default, these credentials are not sent in cross-origin requests, and doing so can make a site vulnerable to Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) attacks.

A client can ask for credentials to be included in cross-site requests in several ways:

When credentials are included:

  • For preflighted requests: The preflight request does not include credentials. If the server's response to the preflight request sets the Access-Control-Allow-Credentials header to true, then the real request will include credentials; otherwise, the browser reports a network error.
  • For non-preflighted requests: The request will include credentials, and if the server's response does not set the Access-Control-Allow-Credentials header to true, the browser reports a network error.
Header type Response header
Forbidden header name No

Syntax

http
Access-Control-Allow-Credentials: true

Directives

true

The server allows credentials to be included in cross-origin HTTP requests. This is the only valid value for this header and is case-sensitive. If you don't need credentials, omit this header entirely rather than setting its value to false.

Examples

Allow credentials:

http
Access-Control-Allow-Credentials: true

Using fetch() with credentials:

js
fetch(url, {
  credentials: "include",
});

Using XMLHttpRequest with credentials:

js
const xhr = new XMLHttpRequest();
xhr.open("GET", "http://example.com/", true);
xhr.withCredentials = true;
xhr.send(null);

Specifications

Specification
Fetch Standard
# http-access-control-allow-credentials

Browser compatibility

BCD tables only load in the browser

See also