R2 Data Catalog now supports read-only API tokens

R2 Data Catalog now accepts read-only API tokens, so query engines and clients that only read data no longer need a read-write token. Previously, every catalog operation required an Admin Read & Write token, which meant read-only clients were granted more access than they needed.

You can now authenticate your Iceberg engine based on your workload:

• Read-only operations (such as listing namespaces, loading tables, and querying data) work with an Admin Read only token (R2 Data Catalog read and R2 storage read).
• Write operations (such as creating or dropping tables and committing transactions) continue to require an Admin Read & Write token.

This lets you follow the principle of least privilege — for example, using a read-write token for the pipeline that writes to your tables and read-only tokens for engines like R2 SQL, DuckDB, or PyIceberg that query them.

Note that credentials vended by the catalog inherit the R2 storage permissions of the token used to authenticate. To ensure read-only access to your underlying data, scope the R2 storage permission to read-only as well.

For details on choosing and creating the right token, refer to Authenticate your Iceberg engine.