How to rotate your Twilio API key

Updated October 2026

Twilio API keys start with SK, and they're different from your Account SID and Auth Token. You can create and delete an SK key by API, with no Dashboard click needed for the swap itself.

Here's the exact process, from Twilio's own docs.

The manual steps

1. In the Twilio Console, go to Account > API keys & tokens, or skip the Console and call the API directly.
2. Create the new key: POST https://iam.twilio.com/v1/Keys, with your Account SID and Auth Token as HTTP Basic auth, body FriendlyName=<name>. Twilio's own docs, checked November 20, 2026, show the response: a sid (the public SK... value) and a secret, which is "shown once."
3. Copy the secret right away. Twilio does not show it to you again.
4. Swap the new sid and secret into every server, function, and script that used the old pair.
5. Test the new key works, then delete the old one: DELETE https://iam.twilio.com/v1/Keys/{Sid}, which returns 204 with no body.

What breaks if you miss a place

A Twilio API Key only works for the Account that created it. Twilio's own docs note that using a key against the wrong Account SID triggers the same error as a dead key. So if a server still has the old SID paired with the new key, nothing works, and the error looks exactly like a failed rotation instead of a mismatch. Move the SID and the key together, not just the key.

How to check the old key is actually dead

Call GET https://api.twilio.com/2010-04-01/Accounts/{AccountSid}.json using the old sid and secret as Basic auth. Twilio's own error reference, checked November 20, 2026, says a deleted, wrong, or mismatched credential returns HTTP 401 with error code 20003, "Permission Denied." A 401 there means the delete worked.

Why the Auth Token is not what you rotate here

Your Account SID and Auth Token are the master credential behind everything on the account, including every API Key you've ever made. Rotating the Auth Token touches all of it at once. An API Key is the narrower, swappable credential, built for exactly this job: one key per app or script, so a leak or a rotation only affects the one thing that used it.

Or let Key Robot do it

Key Robot does this for you today. It uses your Account SID and Auth Token to make a new API key, puts it in your app as one setting (SK...:secret), checks your app still works, and then deletes the old key. It never changes your Auth Token, and it deletes only keys it made.

In our live test on October 26, 2026, one change took 18 seconds on a Render app, and Twilio refused the old key 2.4 seconds later.

See how to rotate your Stripe API key for a service where the key itself still needs a person to click it, or the rotate hub for every service.