Does brightdata-mcp support password authentication instead of an account-wide API token?
Is it possible to authenticate brightdata-mcp with a username:password instead of the account-wide API token? A contributor confirmed that password auth is currently only supported for Scraping Browser, and I'm concerned that a leaked account-wide token could expose the whole account across all zones.
Originally asked on GitHub: https://github.com/brightdata/brightdata-mcp/issues/2
1 answer
Status: open. Password-based authentication for the brightdata-mcp MCP server is not supported yet. As of the maintainer's reply (April 2025), username:password auth exists only for Bright Data's Scraping Browser; the MCP server authenticates with the account-wide API token.
The maintainer said they are open to adding username:password support if there is a strong use case, but nothing in the thread indicates when or whether it will be implemented. The reporter's stated reason for wanting it: if the account-wide token leaks, an attacker could drain credits across all zones, and it is not clear whether spend limits would stop them.
No workaround for password auth appears in this thread. As general advice, if you must use the account-wide token for now, keep it out of files that get committed to source control (for example, load it from an environment variable in your MCP server configuration), since that reduces the chance of the token being exposed in a repo or shared log.
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