Access-Control-Allow-Credentials

The Access-Control-Allow-Credentials response header tells browsers whether to expose the response to the frontend JavaScript code when the request's credentials mode (Request.credentials) is include.

When a request's credentials mode (Request.credentials) is include, browsers will only expose the response to the frontend JavaScript code if the Access-Control-Allow-Credentials value is true.

Credentials are cookies, authorization headers, or TLS client certificates.

When used as part of a response to a preflight request, this indicates whether or not the actual request can be made using credentials. Note that simple GET requests are not preflighted. So, if a request is made for a resource with credentials, and if this header is not returned with the resource, the response is ignored by the browser and not returned to the web content.

The Access-Control-Allow-Credentials header works in conjunction with the XMLHttpRequest.withCredentials property or with the credentials option in the Request() constructor of the Fetch API. For a CORS request with credentials, for browsers to expose the response to the frontend JavaScript code, both the server (using the Access-Control-Allow-Credentials header) and the client (by setting the credentials mode for the XHR, Fetch, or Ajax request) must indicate that they're opting into including credentials.

Header type Response header
Forbidden header name no

Syntax

http

Access-Control-Allow-Credentials: true

Directives

true

The only valid value for this header is true (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 XHR with credentials:

js

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

Using Fetch with credentials:

js

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

Specifications

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

Browser compatibility

BCD tables only load in the browser

See also