Signing in as the AWS account root user

We recommend that you sign in to your AWS account as the AWS account root user only to perform tasks that require the root user.

Sign in to the console as the root user

• Sign in to the IAM console as the account owner by choosing Root user and entering your AWS account email address. On the next page, enter your password.

  Note

  As the root user, you can't sign in to the Sign in as IAM user page. If you see the Sign in as IAM user page, choose Sign in using root user email near the bottom of the page. For help signing in as the root user, see Signing in to the AWS Management Console as the root user in the AWS Sign-In User Guide.

  If multi-factor authentication (MFA) is activated for your account's root user, you are prompted to enter the one-time password from your device.

Sign in to the AWS CLI and SDKs as the root user

Warning

We strongly recommend that you do not create access key pairs for your root user. Because only a few tasks require the root user and you typically perform those tasks infrequently, we recommend signing in to the AWS Management Console to preform the root user tasks.

To use the AWS CLI or to run API operations from an SDK as the account's root user, you need an access key pair. You can then use those in your AWS CLI or SDK profile (such as Python and Boto3) to authenticate your requests.

To create access keys for the root user, see Creating and deleting access keys for the AWS account root user.