Skip to main content
Braintrust has a unique architecture which involves deploying your API endpoints and data in your own cloud environment. These endpoints are secured so that only users from your organization can access them. In fact, you could even run these endpoints in a VPN that Braintrust’s servers can’t access, and the application will work! This guide walks through how your users and services are able to authenticate within this architecture.

​
End-user authentication

The most common form of authentication is end-user authentication to the Braintrust application. Users authenticate with your enterprise’s identity provider (e.g. Google, Okta) and receive credentials directly to their browser. These credentials are later used to communicate with the Braintrust API endpoint deployed in your cloud.

​
API authentication

You can authenticate on behalf of users in your experiments or services using an API key. Braintrust API keys inherit their user’s permissions, and essentially are another way to authenticate as a user. To increase security, API keys are stored as one-way cryptographic hashes and cannot be recovered. The actual key is only displayed once upon creation. If you lose an API key, you will need to generate a new one (and can deactivate the old one). You can create an API key by going to Settings, then under Organization, select API keys.

​
MCP authentication

The Braintrust MCP (Model Context Protocol) server uses API key or OAuth 2.0 authentication, depending on the AI tool used to access the server. When AI tools use OAuth 2.0 to authentication, they:
  1. Initiate an OAuth authorization flow.
  2. Redirect users to authenticate with their Braintrust account.
  3. Receive for API requests.
  4. Use to maintain long-lived sessions.
This authentication method inherits your organization’s security policies and SSO configuration. MCP OAuth tokens follow the same permission model as your user account, providing access only to projects and resources you can normally access.

​
Configure SSO

Make it easy for your team to access Braintrust with your company’s existing login system. We use Clerk behind the scenes to support several SSO/SAML providers:

​
SSO

  • Google
  • Microsoft

​
SAML

  • Okta Workforce
  • Microsoft Entra ID
  • Google Workspace
  • Custom SAML provider

​
OpenID Connect (OIDC)

  • Custom OIDC provider
To get set up, email us at support@braintrust.dev to exchange the appropriate configuration URLs. Once everything’s configured, we’ll turn it on for your domain and your team can start signing in using their regular work credentials.