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Publishable and secret keys

Note

If your application was created after January 18, 2023, you're already using publishable and secret keys.

In early Clerk SDKs, developers were required to configure three keys:

  • Frontend API URL
  • API key
  • JWT key (depending on the SDK version)

New SDKs have replaced these with two keys:

  • Publishable key (prefixed with pk_test_ or pk_live_)
  • Secret key (prefixed with sk_test_ or sk_live_)

The name and format of these keys are common among developer tools, and we adopted them to provide a more familiar developer experience.

Although legacy keys will remain operational, we have updated our documentation and code samples to use the new Publishable Key and Secret Key format.

Caution

Legacy keys cannot be mixed with the new publishable and secret keys. It is important that you replace all keys at once.

We recommend updating at your earliest convenience.

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