CREATE SECRET

MotherDuck lets you store your cloud storage credentials and other sensitive values for convenience, using the familiar DuckDB CREATE SECRET syntax. See DuckDB CREATE SECRET documentation.

Ensure you add the PERSISTENT or IN MOTHERDUCK keyword to create MotherDuck secrets. Secrets stored in MotherDuck are fully encrypted and scoped to the user who created them. They are not shared with other users in your organization.

note

You can use the PERSISTENT keyword to create a local file persistent secret in local DuckDB as well. It gets stored unencrypted in the ~/.duckdb/stored_secrets directory.

When you've loaded the MotherDuck extension, PERSISTENT secrets are stored encrypted in MotherDuck. Locally persisted secrets are not impacted.

You can still create locally persisted secrets when using MotherDuck by specifying the secret storage backend: CREATE SECRET IN LOCAL_FILE.

When using MotherDuck, the statement below creates a cloud-persistent secret stored in MotherDuck.

Syntax

CREATE [OR REPLACE] (PERSISTENT SECRET [secret_name] | SECRET [secret_name] IN MOTHERDUCK)
(
    TYPE <S3 | GCS | R2 | AZURE | HUGGINGFACE | ICEBERG | FLIGHTS>,
    <storage-specific properties>
);

Secret parameters

Supported parameters for S3, GCS, and R2 secrets:

Name	Description	Secret	Type	Default
ENDPOINT	Specify a custom S3 endpoint	S3, GCS, R2	STRING	s3.amazonaws.com for S3
KEY_ID	The ID of the key to use	S3, GCS, R2	STRING	-
REGION	The region used for authentication. For S3, this should match the region of the bucket. For R2, use auto since R2 buckets are regionless.	S3, GCS, R2	STRING	Orgs will default to the region that was chosen at signup: us-east-1, us-west-2, eu-central-1, or eu-west-1. For R2, defaults to auto.
SECRET	The secret of the key to use	S3, GCS, R2	STRING	-
SESSION_TOKEN	Optionally, a session token can be passed to use temporary credentials	S3, GCS, R2	STRING	-
URL_COMPATIBILITY_MODE	Can help when URLs contain problematic characters	S3, GCS, R2	BOOLEAN	true
URL_STYLE	Either vhost or path	S3, GCS, R2	STRING	vhost for S3, path for R2 and GCS
USE_SSL	Whether to use HTTPS or HTTP	S3, GCS, R2	BOOLEAN	true
ACCOUNT_ID	The R2 account ID to use for generating the endpoint URL	R2	STRING	-
KMS_KEY_ID	AWS KMS (Key Management Service) key for Server Side Encryption S3	S3	STRING	-
SCOPE	Scope of secret resolution; In the case of multiple matching secrets, the longest prefix is chosen	S3, GCS, R2	STRING	-

info

Because of SSL certificate verification requirements, S3 bucket names that contain dots (.) cannot be accessed using vhost style URLs. This is due to AWS's SSL wildcard certificate (*.s3.amazonaws.com) which only validates single-level subdomains. To resolve this SSL issue, use URL_STYLE path in your secret.

Examples

Manually defined S3 secret

To manually create an S3 secret in MotherDuck:

CREATE SECRET IN MOTHERDUCK (
    TYPE S3,
    KEY_ID 's3_access_key',
    SECRET 's3_secret_key',
    REGION 'us-east-1',
    SCOPE 'my-bucket-path'
);

This creates a new secret with a default name (for S3, __default_s3) and a default scope (i.e., [s3://, s3n://, s3a://]) used for path matching explained below.

info

DuckDB uses the SCOPE parameter to determine which secret to use. When using persistent secrets or public buckets, scoping the secrets is important so that the database uses the correct secret. Imprecise scoping will lead to authentication errors.

Learn more in the DuckDB documentation.

Secret providers

MotherDuck supports the same secret providers as DuckDB.

To create a secret by automatically fetching credentials using mechanisms provided by the AWS SDK, see AWS CREDENTIAL_CHAIN provider.

To create a secret by automatically fetching credentials using mechanisms provided by the Azure SDK, see Azure CREDENTIAL_CHAIN provider.

To create a secret by automatically fetching credentials using mechanisms provided by the Hugging Face CLI, see Hugging Face CREDENTIAL_CHAIN provider.

To store a secret from a given secret provider in MotherDuck, specify the PERSISTENT or IN MOTHERDUCK keyword in addition.

Provider examples

If you are logged in to a provider on your local machine you can use those credentials to connect to the bucket. Creating the secret does not work in the MotherDuck UI since your credential provider is not available there, but you can use the secret once it's stored.

To store a secret configured through aws configure:

CREATE PERSISTENT SECRET aws_secret (
      TYPE S3,
      PROVIDER CREDENTIAL_CHAIN
  );

To store a secret using AWS SSO credentials:

-- if you use AWS SSO, run `aws sso login --profile <your_sso_profile>` first
CREATE SECRET aws_secret IN MOTHERDUCK (
      TYPE S3,
      PROVIDER CREDENTIAL_CHAIN,
      CHAIN 'sso',
      PROFILE '<your_sso_profile>'
  );

Secret validation

Starting with DuckDB v1.4.0, credentials are validated at secret creation time. If your credentials are not resolvable locally (for example, expired SSO tokens or missing ~/.aws/credentials), CREATE SECRET will fail with a Secret Validation Failure error. The recommended fix is to use the correct CHAIN and PROFILE for your credential type (see the SSO example above) and confirm your SSO session is active. If you need to bypass local validation, you can add VALIDATION 'none', but keep in mind that this skips the local check that confirms your credentials are valid before storing them in MotherDuck.

To store a secret configured through az configure:

CREATE SECRET azure_secret IN MOTHERDUCK (
      TYPE AZURE,
      PROVIDER CREDENTIAL_CHAIN,
      ACCOUNT_NAME 'some-account'
  );

Iceberg secrets

Secrets with TYPE ICEBERG hold the credentials for an Iceberg REST catalog. Reference the secret by name when you attach the catalog with CREATE DATABASE (TYPE ICEBERG, "secret" <secret_name>, ...).

-- OAuth2 client credentials
CREATE SECRET my_iceberg_secret IN MOTHERDUCK (
    TYPE ICEBERG,
    CLIENT_ID 'my_client_id',
    CLIENT_SECRET 'my_client_secret',
    OAUTH2_SERVER_URI 'https://my-catalog.example.com/v1/oauth/tokens'
);

-- Bearer token
CREATE SECRET my_iceberg_secret IN MOTHERDUCK (
    TYPE ICEBERG,
    TOKEN 'my_bearer_token'
);

Common Iceberg secret parameters:

Name	Description
CLIENT_ID	OAuth2 client ID
CLIENT_SECRET	OAuth2 client secret
OAUTH2_SERVER_URI	OAuth2 token endpoint that issues the catalog access token
OAUTH2_SCOPE	OAuth2 scope requested when fetching the token
TOKEN	Bearer token, as an alternative to OAuth2 credentials
ENDPOINT	Iceberg REST catalog URL. Set here or in the CREATE DATABASE options

For Amazon S3 Tables, authenticate with an S3 secret instead and set endpoint_type 's3_tables' in the database options. See Amazon S3 Tables.

Create Iceberg secrets with the IN MOTHERDUCK or PERSISTENT keyword so they're stored in MotherDuck and available to the server-side catalog attachment.

Flight secrets

Secrets with TYPE FLIGHTS hold key-value pairs for Flights — API keys, connection strings, or any other sensitive values your Flight code needs at runtime. Pass the pairs as a DuckDB MAP in the PARAMS parameter:

CREATE SECRET flight_secret IN MOTHERDUCK (
    TYPE FLIGHTS,
    PARAMS MAP {
        'API_KEY': '<your_api_key>',
        'ENDPOINT': 'https://api.example.com'
    }
);

Create Flight secrets with the IN MOTHERDUCK or PERSISTENT keyword — they're read by the MotherDuck-managed Flight runtime, so they must be stored in MotherDuck.

See the flight_secret_names parameter in MD_CREATE_FLIGHT for guidance on attaching secrets to Flights, environment variable names at runtime, and when to use secrets instead of the Flight's config map.

Querying with secrets

Secret scope is supported in the same way as in DuckDB to allow multiple secrets of the same type to be stored in MotherDuck. When there are multiple local (i.e. in memory and store in local file) and remote (i.e. MotherDuck) secrets of the same type, scope matching (secret scope against the file path) happens to determine which secret to use to open a file. Both local and remote secrets are considered in scope matching.

In the case of multiple matching secrets, the secret with the longest matching scope prefix is chosen.

In the case of multiple secrets stored in different secret storages sharing the same scope (e.g. the default scope if not specified), matching secret is chosen based on the following order: local temp secret > local_file secret > MotherDuck secret.

Local secrets and cloud execution

When you query cloud storage (S3, GCS, Azure, R2) while connected to MotherDuck, the query is routed to MotherDuck's cloud execution engine, not your local machine. MotherDuck can use any matching secret to authenticate with your storage provider, including temporary, in-memory secrets from your local DuckDB session. Your local DuckDB client does not connect to cloud storage directly.

To see which secret (either local or remote) is being used by MotherDuck, the DuckDB which_secret table function can be used, which takes a path and the secret type.

Example usage

To see which secret is used to open a file:

FROM which_secret('s3://my-bucket/my_dataset.parquet', 's3');
┌───────────────────────┬────────────┬────────────┐
│         name          │ persistent │  storage   │
│        varchar        │  varchar   │  varchar   │
├───────────────────────┼────────────┼────────────┤
│ __default_s3          │ PERSISTENT │ motherduck │
└───────────────────────┴────────────┴────────────┘

Discovering buckets and files

If you want to inspect cloud storage from SQL before querying files directly:

• Use MD_LIST_BUCKETS_FOR_SECRET() to list buckets visible to an S3/AWS secret.
• Use MD_LIST_FILES() to list files in s3://, azure://, or az:// paths.

note

MD_LIST_FILES() supports S3 and Azure paths only. It does not accept r2://, gcs://, or gs:// paths.

Troubleshooting

If you encounter issues creating or using secrets, check out our troubleshooting guides:

• AWS S3 Secrets Troubleshooting - Common issues with AWS S3 authentication and credentials
• Error Messages - Understanding MotherDuck error messages