API Tutorial: Create Service Account tokens and dashboards for an organization

Fri, 03 Apr 2026 20:44:05 +0000

Create Service Account tokens and dashboards for an organization

Use the Grafana API to set up new Grafana organizations or to add dynamically generated dashboards to an existing organization.

Authentication

There are two authentication methods to access the API:

Basic authentication: A Grafana Admin user can access some parts of the Grafana API through basic authentication.
Service Account tokens: All organization actions can be accessed through a Service Account token. A Service Account token is associated with an organization. It can be used to create dashboards and other components specific for that organization.

How to create a new organization and a Service Account Token

The task is to create a new organization and then add a Token that can be used by other users. In the examples below which use basic auth, the user is admin and the password is admin.

Create the org. Here is an example using curl:
Bash
```
curl -X POST -H "Content-Type: application/json" -d '{"name":"apiorg"}' http://admin:admin@localhost:3000/api/orgs
```
This should return a response: {"message":"Organization created","orgId":6}. Use the orgId for the next steps.

Optional step. If the org was created previously and/or step 3 fails then first add your Admin user to the org:

curl -X POST -H "Content-Type: application/json" -d '{"loginOrEmail":"admin", "role": "Admin"}' http://admin:admin@localhost:3000/api/orgs/<org id of new org>/users

Switch the org context for the Admin user to the new org:

curl -X POST http://admin:admin@localhost:3000/api/user/using/<id of new org>

Create a Service Account:

curl -X POST -H "Content-Type: application/json" -d '{"name":"test", "role": "Admin"}' http://admin:admin@localhost:3000/api/serviceaccounts

Create a Service Account token for the service account created in the previous step:

curl -X POST -H "Content-Type: application/json" -d '{"name":"test-token"}' http://admin:admin@localhost:3000/api/serviceaccounts/<service account id>/tokens

This should return a response:

HTTP/1.1 200
Content-Type: application/json

{
  "id": 7,
  "name": "test-token",
  "key": "eyJrIjoiVjFxTHZ6dGdPSjg5Um92MjN1RlhjMkNqYkZUbm9jYkwiLCJuIjoiZ3JhZmFuYSIsImlkIjoxfQ=="
}

Save the key returned here in your password manager as it is not possible to fetch again it in the future.

How to add a dashboard

Using the Token that was created in the previous step, you can create a dashboard or carry out other actions without having to switch organizations.

Add a dashboard using the key (or bearer token as it is also called):

curl -X POST --insecure -H "Authorization: Bearer eyJrIjoiR0ZXZmt1UFc0OEpIOGN5RWdUalBJTllUTk83VlhtVGwiLCJuIjoiYXBpa2V5Y3VybCIsImlkIjo2fQ==" -H "Content-Type: application/json" -d '{
  "dashboard": {
    "id": null,
    "title": "Production Overview",
    "tags": [ "templated" ],
    "timezone": "browser",
    "rows": [
      {
      }
    ],
    "schemaVersion": 6,
    "version": 0
  },
  "overwrite": false
}' http://localhost:3000/api/dashboards/db

Note: If you export a dashboard for sharing externally using the Share > Export menu in the Grafana UI, you cannot import that dashboard. Instead, click View JSON and save it to a file or fetch the JSON output through the API.

cURL examples

Fri, 03 Apr 2026 20:44:05 +0000

cURL examples

This page provides examples of calls to the Grafana API using cURL.

The most basic example for a dashboard for which there is no authentication. You can test the following on your local machine, assuming a default installation and anonymous access enabled, required:

curl http://localhost:3000/api/search

Here’s a cURL command that works for getting the home dashboard when you are running Grafana locally with basic authentication enabled using the default admin credentials:

curl http://admin:admin@localhost:3000/api/search

To pass a username and password with HTTP basic authorization, encode them as base64. You can’t use authorization tokens in the request.

For example, to list permissions associated with roles given a username of user and password of password, use:

curl --location '<grafana_url>/api/access-control/builtin-roles' --user 'user:password'

HTTP API examples on Grafana Labs

API Tutorial: Create Service Account tokens and dashboards for an organization

Create Service Account tokens and dashboards for an organization

Authentication

How to create a new organization and a Service Account Token

How to add a dashboard

cURL examples

cURL examples