Enable seamless service-to-service communication with short-lived, scoped access tokens. Authgear’s Machine-to-Machine (M2M) tokens let backend services, APIs, and IoT devices authenticate securely without human intervention — all powered by the industry-standard OAuth 2.0 Client Credentials Flow.
Machine-to-machine (M2M) authentication is the process of allowing two applications or services to communicate securely without a user present.
Instead of passwords or API keys, each service uses its own Client ID and Client Secret to request a short-lived access token.This ensures secure, auditable, and revocable service-to-service authentication, widely used in backend integrations, microservices, and IoT systems.
/oauth/token endpoint, and receives a short-lived access token, containing only the scopes you’ve assigned.
M2M authentication is a method that allows services or applications to securely communicate without user credentials. Instead, services exchange M2M tokens (short-lived access tokens) via the OAuth Client Credentials Flow.
The Client Credentials Flow issues an access token directly to a machine or service (not a user). A service authenticates using its Client ID and Secret and receives a JWT token it can use to access protected APIs.
M2M tokens are short-lived, scoped, and revocable. Unlike static API keys, they improve security by limiting exposure and allowing fine-grained access control.
Yes. M2M authentication is commonly used for microservice-to-microservice communication, ensuring secure backend API calls without embedding static secrets.