DocumentationGrafana CloudTest applications and servicesPerformance TestingAuthor and run testsAuthenticate on the CLI

Authenticate on the CLI

To run cloud tests from the CLI, you need to authenticate your account. Authentication is required both for tests that run on the cloud service and for results that stream to the cloud service. To authenticate accounts, k6 provides an API token, which you can pass on the CLI or through the REST API.

You can generate two types of API tokens for k6 Cloud, depending on how you want to authenticate:

• Personal level API tokens grant access through your account with the Grafana Cloud k6 App.
• Stack level API tokens grant access for actions not tied to a user but to the Grafana Cloud Stack.

To generate API tokens, follow these steps.

Get a personal API token

A personal API token provides API access to your account with k6.

In Grafana Cloud, go to k6 Cloud App > Settings > Personal API token.

On this section, you can copy, see, and regenerate your personal API token.

Get a Grafana Stack API token

Only admins can access and manage these tokens.

A Stack API token provides access to all projects within the Grafana Cloud Stack. You can use it to run tests without linking the run to a specific user, e.g. when running tests from a CI platform. To generate a token, follow these steps:

In Grafana Cloud, go to k6 Cloud App > Settings > Grafana Stack API token.

On this section, you can create, see, and regenerate the tokens.

By default, organizations can create a maximum of 5 tokens.

Note that you must specify the project where the test runs will be created when using a non-personal token. Check out how to set the projectID.

Authenticate with the login command

To authenticate with an API token in the CLI, enter the following command:

bash Copy

k6 login cloud --token $TOKEN

k6 login stores your API Token in a local config file to authenticate when running cloud commands. Unless your token changes or you run tests on multiple cloud accounts, you need to run k6 login only once

Authenticate with an environment variable

You can also authenticate with your k6 Cloud API authentication token via environment variables. Make sure you have set the K6_CLOUD_TOKEN as your authentication token, and k6 will pick it up when running.

bash Copy

## run a cloud test
K6_CLOUD_TOKEN=$TOKEN k6 cloud script.js

## run locally and stream to the cloud
K6_CLOUD_TOKEN=$TOKEN k6 run -o cloud script.js

Authenticate with a config file

You can also directly add your authentication token to a configuration file:

• On Linux:

  bash Copy

  ${HOME}/.config/loadimpact/k6/config.json

• On Mac

  bash Copy

  ${HOME}/Library/Application Support/loadimpact/k6/config.json

• On Windows

  bash Copy

  C:\Users\<User>\AppData\Roaming\loadimpact\k6\config.json

Or, set the config path with the -c/--config PATH/TO/CONFIG_FILE CLI flag.

After your token has been added to the config file, it should look something like this (removing any other config options from the file):

json Copy

{
  "collectors": {
    "cloud": {
      "token": "YOUR_API_AUTH_TOKEN"
    }
  }
}

Authenticate in Docker

If you’re running k6 in a Docker container, the -c/--config CLI flag is the recommended approach. This ensures that the k6 config file where the API authentication information is stored is persisted via a Docker volume to the host machine.

bash Copy

docker run --rm -i -v /path/on-host:/path/in-container/ grafana/k6 \
login cloud -c /path/in-container/config.json