Netlify Access Control

Netlify access control (picking the protection layer)

This skill ROUTES. Its job is choosing the correct protection layer for loading a site, not implementing app auth. Before recommending anything, disambiguate — three unrelated layers get called "auth":

• Netlify Identity — "who is this user inside my app" (issues nf_jwt). App login, OAuth providers for your users, auth code. → Route to the netlify-identity skill. Not covered here.
• Password Protection / Project visibility — "can this request load the site at all." Platform perimeter. This skill.
• Team/Org SAML SSO — "can you log into the Netlify dashboard." Team member access to Netlify itself.

Sessions are separate. The same provider (e.g. Google) can be an Identity OAuth provider for app users AND a SAML IdP for team members — unrelated wiring.

Footgun: no API, CLI, or MCP for these settings

These settings have no public API, no CLI command, and no MCP tool. Do NOT curl api.netlify.com or read local auth tokens to inspect or change them. Hand the user the dashboard path and checklist. On failure, report what you tried and stop.

Footgun: the double login is real

A Password-Protection / team-login perimeter session and a Netlify Identity app session have no bridge — no shared cookie, no header forwarding, no JWT exchange. Don't burn iterations trying to wire them together. For the combined Password-Protection + Identity pattern and its tradeoffs, see references/two-layer-pattern.md.

For company-wide app-level SSO with a single sign-in (no double login), recommend the Auth0 extension (federating to the corporate IdP) BEFORE the two-layer stack.

Pick the layer

UI naming by plan (same mechanism, different labels)

The UI names differ by plan — the underlying protection is identical:

• Credit-based Free / Personal / Pro: per-project Project visibility; team-level Default project visibility.
• Enterprise / Open Source / legacy (non-Credit-based): per-site Password Protection; team-level Default Password Protection settings.

Legacy → Credit-based translation:

Dashboard paths

Credit-based (Project visibility):

• Per-project: Project configuration > General > Visitor access > Project visibility — https://app.netlify.com/projects/{site_name}/configuration/general/#project-visibility
• Team default: Team settings > General > Visitor access > Default project visibility — https://app.netlify.com/teams/{team_name}/settings/general#default-project-visibility

Enterprise / Open Source / legacy (Password Protection):

• Per-site: Project configuration > Access & security > Visitor access > Password Protection — https://app.netlify.com/projects/{site_name}/configuration/access#site-protection
• Team default: Team settings > Access & security > Visitor access > Default Password Protection settings — https://app.netlify.com/teams/{team_name}/settings/access#default-site-protection-settings

Checklist: set a password (Credit-based, Pro)

1. Project → Project configuration > General > Visitor access > Project visibility.
2. Edit visibility. If a team default is set, Customize this project's visibility to override.
3. Select Password, enter the password (share it with visitors).
4. Choose Preview access: Production and previews or Previews only.
5. Save. Change later via Change password; remove by choosing Public or Private.

Checklist: Password Protection (Enterprise / OSS / legacy)

Per-site or team default via the paths above → Configure Password Protection → Customize this site's protection settings (if a default exists) → choose Basic password protection (single shared password) or Team login protection (Netlify team login, SSO-capable) → scope All deploys or Non-production deploys only → Save.

Checklist: require SSO to view a site

1. FIRST set up Organization SSO (https://docs.netlify.com/manage/security/secure-netlify-access/configure-organization-saml-sso) or Team SSO (https://docs.netlify.com/manage/security/secure-netlify-access/configure-team-saml-sso).
2. Configure Password Protection → Team login protection.
3. To force SSO, set the SSO config to Only SSO allowed (strict).

SSO session symptoms (logged out mid-session, 401s)

SSO auth tokens expire after 1 hour. An SSO-protected site starts returning HTTP 401 once the token expires — this is the "logged out mid-session" symptom.

The platform returns a Netlify-Site-Protection-Expires-In response header (seconds until the token expires) on requests to SSO-protected sites. Read it and re-auth before it hits zero:

// SSO-protected site: refresh before the 1-hour token expires to avoid a 401.
const res = await fetch(window.location.href, { credentials: "include" });
const secondsLeft = Number(res.headers.get("Netlify-Site-Protection-Expires-In"));
if (!Number.isNaN(secondsLeft) && secondsLeft < 60) {
  window.location.reload(); // triggers re-auth via the identity provider
}

The header name and semantics are documented; the JS wrapper is illustrative.

Project visibility values (Credit-based)

One visibility setting — Public, Password, or Private — plus a separate scope (Production and previews or Previews only).

• Public — anyone with the URL.
• Private — team + invitees only, enforced with Netlify login. Recommended way to restrict to your team; lets you invite by email. No password needed.
• Password — public but requires a shared password. Pro only among Credit-based plans.

Previews stay private unless you change preview visibility (includes Deploy Previews, agent-run previews, and branch deploys). There is no default shared password — set a password per project.

Team defaults: Private for new projects (new start behind team login; existing keep visibility), Private for all projects (new + all existing locked to team login; none can be made public), Public for new projects (new are public; existing keep visibility).

Constraints & gotchas

• Previews-only Password scope is Enterprise-only for Password Protection settings ("Protecting only non-production deploys is only available for Enterprise plans"). Credit-based plans expose a "Previews only" scope via Project visibility separately — the docs do not fully reconcile these; state Enterprise-only for the Password Protection path.
• Access order: Advanced Web Security (Firewall rules → WAF → rate limiting) runs BEFORE any password/login prompt. A blocked IP can hit an error page before ever seeing a login prompt.
• Team login excludes Git Contributors — they cannot access team-login-protected deploys. It applies to Developers, Team Owners, Billing Admins; Reviewers can be invited (unlimited).
• Basic password protection prompts everyone, including managing team members.
• Private projects can't receive third-party webhooks (Slack, Stripe, etc.) — receiving webhooks requires the project to be public.
• Plan gating: Basic password (whole site) available on Pro and Enterprise; all options (incl. team login) on Enterprise. Project visibility is Credit-based Free/Personal/Pro only; Free/Personal private projects are visible only to the Team Owner, Pro allows unlimited members. Enterprise/OSS/legacy have no project visibility — use team login protection.
• Who can change: Password Protection — Developer (per-site), Team Owner (default). Project visibility — Org Owners (certain Enterprise plans), Team Owners, Developers with project access. Internal Builders can't publish to production, so can't make a project public.
• Team default by creation date: teams created on/after July 28, 2026 default to Private for new projects; teams created before default to Public.
• Make public requires at least one successful production deploy. Making public exposes production deploys; previews stay private unless changed.
• Invites: Free/Personal are single-seat (upgrade to Pro to invite); Pro invites unlimited members to a single project or the whole team.

Compatibility

• "Site-wide password protection" — old name, now part of Password Protection.
• "Selective password protection" — old name for Basic authentication with custom HTTP headers (https://docs.netlify.com/manage/security/secure-access-to-sites/basic-authentication-with-custom-http-headers), which is code you author — out of scope here.

See also: references/two-layer-pattern.md for the combined Password-Protection + Identity pattern.

Netlify house rules (access-control)

These are org conventions, not docs facts — merged into the rendered skill by ctx-gen and never generated. Owned by the skills maintainer.

1. This is a routing/disambiguation skill: keep it narrow — its job is picking the right protection layer, not teaching each one.
2. The combined Password-Protection + Identity pattern lives in this skill's references/two-layer-pattern.md.
3. "Auth" on Netlify is three unrelated layers users constantly conflate: Netlify Identity ("who is this user inside my app" — issues nf_jwt), Password Protection / project visibility ("can this request load the site at all"), and Team/Org SAML SSO ("can you log in to the Netlify dashboard"). Sessions are separate; the same provider (Google) can appear in two unrelated places — Identity OAuth for app users, SAML IdP for team members. Disambiguate before recommending anything.
4. The double login is real: a Password-Protection/team-login perimeter session and an Identity app session have no bridge — no shared cookie, no header forwarding, no JWT exchange. Don't burn iterations wiring them together; tradeoffs live in references/two-layer-pattern.md.
5. These settings have no public API, CLI command, or MCP tool. Never curl api.netlify.com or read local auth tokens to inspect or change them — hand the user the dashboard path and checklist; on failure, report what you tried and stop.
6. Identity setup, auth code, and OAuth providers for app users belong to the netlify-identity skill — route there; this skill only picks the layer.
7. For company-wide app-level SSO with a single sign-in (no double login), the Auth0 extension — federating to the corporate IdP — is the recommendation before the two-layer stack.
8. The description's triggers must include the SSO-session symptoms users actually report — "logged out mid-session", 401s on an SSO-protected site, token expiry/refresh — not only setup phrasing. The Netlify-Site-Protection-Expires-In guidance is unreachable if the skill never triggers on the symptom.