Keycloak for Machine to Machine Authentication

Keycloak is the open-source reference for machine-to-machine authentication. With Cloud-IAM, it allows you to enforce strict access scopes, and keep full control over your machine credentials based in Europe, available 24/7.

Deploy your IAM now

99.95%

SLA

500+

customers

20M+

users managed

70+

regions worldwide

Secure M2M by design

Keycloak gives your engineering team full control over every machine identity, without building or maintaining custom authentication logic. A zero-trust approach to API security starts here: every service is authenticated, every access is scoped, every identity is auditable.

Zero static credentials in code

API keys embedded in repositories or environment variables are the most common source of credential leaks in backend architectures. With Keycloak, services authenticate dynamically at runtime using the Client Credentials flow, no secrets stored in code, no manual distribution across services.

Short-lived tokens by design

Every token issued by Keycloak has a defined expiry. Even if a token is intercepted, its exposure window is strictly limited. The Client Credentials flow is stateless by design, when a token expires, the service requests a new one. No refresh token, no persistent session to manage.

Granular scope control

Each Keycloak client is configured with the minimum set of permissions required for its function. A data ingestion service cannot call an admin API. A reporting service cannot write to a production database. Least privilege is enforced at the identity level, not left to application logic.

Single source of truth

All machine identities, internal services, IoT devices, CI/CD pipelines, partner integrations, are managed from a single Keycloak instance. One place to audit access, one place to revoke credentials, one place to monitor token issuance across your entire infrastructure.

Full credential portability

Keycloak's underlying database can be fully exported and re-imported into any new instance at any time. Migrate between cloud providers, change regions, or move from self-hosted to managed, without losing your identity configuration. Cloud-IAM supports this natively, giving you full sovereignty over your machine identities.

Any question about your own use case?

From microservices to IoT

Keycloak handles every M2M architecture

Logistics & transport networks

Connect thousands of client systems to central registries and data platforms. Each system gets its own scoped credentials, with no pricing impact tied to the number of M2M connections.

Fintech & financial services

Meet strict regulatory requirements, GDPR, NIS2, PSD2, while securing continuous inter-service communication. Keycloak provides the audit trail, token lifecycle control, and EU-hosted infrastructure that compliance teams require.

IoT & connected devices

Assign dedicated credentials to each device in your fleet. Devices authenticate autonomously, receive short-lived tokens, and transmit data securely, at scale, without manual intervention.

CI/CD pipelines & DevOps automation

Authenticate every pipeline and automation script with its own service account. No hardcoded secrets in your CI configuration. Full auditability of what ran, when, and with what permissions.

B2B & partner API access

Create dedicated Keycloak clients per partner. Define exactly what each integration can access. Revoke access instantly, without touching your core infrastructure.

Cloud-native & data infrastructure

Deploy Keycloak as the central authorization server across your multi-cloud environment. Every service verifies tokens independently via the JWKS endpoint, no single point of failure.

Machine-to-machine authentication flow between Service A, Keycloak and Service B with signed JWT verification

Better understand our Keycloak consulting services

Built on open standards

Keycloak natively implements the OAuth 2.0 Client Credentials flow, the standard specifically designed for service-to-service authentication. Unlike proprietary IAM solutions, Keycloak treats machine identities as a first-class citizen, each service gets its own identity, its own credentials, its own scoped permissions.

Signed JWT tokens are verified by each service independently via the JWKS endpoint, no round-trip to Keycloak on every request, no central bottleneck, no single point of failure.

Designed for scale, built for sovereignty

Open-source, battle-tested for over 10 years, built for scale. No pricing tied to M2M connections. No lock-in. Full credential portability, export and re-import your entire identity database at any time, something no proprietary solution allows.

For advanced architectures requiring cross-service identity delegation, Keycloak supports Token Exchange (RFC 8693), enabling a service to obtain a token on behalf of another, without exposing credentials. A capability that few IAM solutions support natively.

Deploy a Keycloak SaaS for a predictable pricing, without surprise

Transparent pricing you can trust, no hidden fees. Easily plan your budget with our clear cost calculator and predictability.

View all pricing plans

Keycloak for M2M Fully managed by experts

Running Keycloak in production for M2M workloads is not the same as running a dev instance. Keycloak sits on the critical path of your services, if it goes down, your entire inter-service communication stops. Cloud-IAM removes that operational burden entirely.

‍

Always-on infrastructure

Up to 99.98% SLA uptime guarantee. Built-in redundancy, automated failover, and a measured uptime of 99.9834% in 2025. Your M2M connections never stop, neither does your Keycloak.

Fully managed lifecycle

Upgrades, backups, scaling, disaster recovery: Cloud-IAM handles it all. Your engineering team focuses on building, not on operating identity infrastructure.

European sovereignty

ISO 27001 certified. Hosted in Europe. GDPR-compliant by design. Full data sovereignty for your machine identities, no exposure to non-EU jurisdictional risks.

24/7 Keycloak expertise

Direct access to Keycloak experts, not a generic support queue. From M2M configuration to complex multi-tenant architectures, our team has seen it all.

‍

all by a 100% in-house team based in Europe

Frequently Asked Questions

Can’t find your answer? Need any help?

Will the Keycloak admin REST APIs remain unchanged?

You get full access to Keycloak's API — just like with an on-premise setup.

What migration path does your team recommend on old Keycloak version?

For your migrations, we recommend checking out our dedicated documentation page — it walks you through everything you need to upgrade to the latest Keycloak version.

What time frame will I need to apply the version upgrade?

We maintain versions for 1 year; you can find the documentation detailing the deprecation schedule.

What version of Keycloak do you support?

Every new Keycloak release is thoroughly tested by our team before being made available to our clients. We ensure there are no security flaws or regressions, so you always run the latest and most secure stable version (latest version supported).

Is the integration of custom SPI/Extensions possible and how?

Yes absolutely ! Here it is our documentation on this subject : Custom Extensions & API Automation