What are service accounts?

 A service account is a special kind of account used by an application or a virtual machine (VM) instance, not a person. Applications use service accounts to make authorized API calls, authorized as either the service account itself, or as Google Workspace or Cloud Identity users through domain-wide delegation.

For example, a Compute Engine VM may run as a service account, and that account can be given permissions to access the resources it needs. This way the service account is the identity of the service, and the service account's permissions control which resources the service can access.

A service account is identified by its email address, which is unique to the account.

Differences between a service account and a user account

Service accounts differ from user accounts in a few key ways:

  • Service accounts do not have passwords, and cannot log in via browsers or cookies.
  • Service accounts are associated with private/public RSA key-pairs that are used for authentication to Google.
  • You can let other users or service accounts impersonate a service account.
  • Service accounts are not members of your Google Workspace domain, unlike user accounts. For example, if you share assets with all members in your Google Workspace domain, they will not be shared with service accounts. Similarly, any assets created by a service account cannot be owned or managed by Google Workspace or Cloud Identity admins. This doesn't apply when using domain-wide delegation, because API calls are authorized as the impersonated user, not the service account itself.

Service account keys


Types of service accounts

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