legacy
Personal access tokens (PATs)
Personal access tokens (PATs) is legacy, replaced by OAuth token federation (legacy since December 2024).
Personal access tokens (PATs) OAuth token federation
Long-lived bearer tokens used to authenticate to the Databricks REST API, CLI, and integrations.
- These long-lived bearer tokens authenticate to the REST API, CLI, and integrations - but they can't automate account-level functionality, and have a habit of ending up pasted into notebooks.
- Databricks now says, where possible, to use OAuth instead 'because OAuth provides stronger security.'
- Being labelled legacy did not stop the feature work: scoped personal access tokens, which restrict a token to only the API operations you name, went generally available in April 2026.
- Category
- Developer experience
- Also known as
- PAT, personal access token, token authentication
- Verified
- 2026-08-20
Sources
- Official Official Databricks / Microsoft docs
- Community Community: PAT retention change