Authentication and provisioning overview

SonarQube comes with its own user database, as well as the ability to delegate authentication via protocols and providers. Each method offers:

• user identity management
• authentication
• user and group provisioning 
• group synchronization (optional for JIT provisioning)

Supported authentication methods

You can use one of the following authentication methods to allow the same authentication between SonarQube and your authentication system:

• HTTP header
• LDAP
• SAML with:
  • Azure AD
  • Keycloak
  • Okta
• GitHub 
• Bitbucket Cloud 
• GitLab 

User, group and permissions provisioning

There are two ways of provisioning users and groups in SonarQube: Just-in-Time (JIT) and automatic provisioning.

In both cases, permissions themselves are still managed in SonarQube. The most effective way to handle permissions is to give permissions to groups (vs. individual users) directly and/or use Permission templates, then manage group membership using one of the provisioning methods.

Just-in-Time provisioning

This is the default provisioning method. User accounts are created in SonarQube when users log in for the first time. Groups must be manually created by administrators. However, memberships are automatically updated at each user login.

Group synchronization

When using group synchronization, the following details apply regardless of which delegated authentication method is used:

• Memberships in a group are synchronized only if a group with the same name exists in SonarQube.  Administrators must first create or rename groups in SonarQube. 
• Memberships in synchronized groups override any membership configured locally in SonarQube. When enabling group synchronization, manually added group memberships get reset.
• Memberships in the default built-in sonar-users group remain even if the group does not exist in the identity provider.

For specific details about group synchronization, refer to each provider's group synchronization section. 

Automatic provisioning

Users and groups are automatically synchronized using the identity provider as the source of truth. 

The main benefit compared to Just-in-Time provisioning is that user and group deprovisioning also happens automatically and does not require administrator intervention.

SonarQube enables automatic provisioning for the following providers: 

• Starting in Enterprise Edition:
  • Microsoft Entra ID and Okta (through the SCIM protocol): Group and user synchronization. 
• Starting in Developer Edition:
  • GitHub: Group and user synchronization. Project permissions are also synchronized and deprovisioned automatically. 
  • GitLab: Group and user synchronization.

Local users concept

If the automatic provisioning mode is enabled with a third-party identity provider (e.g. GitHub or GitLab), all users that are not auto-provisioned (i.e., manually created users, or through another identity provider Just-in-Time-provisioned users), are called Local users.

The actions you can perform on local users are restricted as follows:

• You cannot change user passwords.
• You can remove but not add a project's permissions to local users. However, you can still define default project permissions with the permission templates.
• You can remove but not add local users to a local group.
• You can still deactivate local users and remove local groups.

In addition, you cannot manually create users.

Revoking tokens for deactivated users

When SonarQube authentication is delegated to an external identity provider, deactivating a user on the identity provider side does not remove any tokens associated with the user on the SonarQube side. We recommend deactivating the user in SonarQube to ensure tokens associated with that user can no longer be used. See Deactivating user accounts.