Configure settings and profiles

Many of Prefect’s features - especially interactions with the API - require configuration. Configuration can be set through two mechanisms:

• environment variables: Prefect settings are always prefixed with PREFECT_. Using environment variables is most useful when configuring the runtime environment of a workflow or when updating settings temporarily for a single session.
• Prefect profiles: Prefect profiles store your preferred settings locally, and allow you to switch between common groups of configuration. For example, you can switch between a self-hosted Prefect server instance and a Prefect Cloud account.

To view all available settings and their active values from the command line, run:

prefect config view --show-defaults

These settings are type-validated and documented.

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Manage profiles

Prefect profiles are persisted groups of settings on your local machine. By default these settings are stored in a TOML file located at ~/.prefect/profiles.toml. This location can be configured through the setting PREFECT_PROFILES_PATH. One and only one profile can be active at any time. Initially, a default profile is active and contains no settings overrides.

The prefect profile CLI commands enable you to create, review, and manage profiles.

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Configure settings

The prefect config CLI commands enable you to manage the settings within the currently active profile.

For example, the following CLI commands set configuration in the default profile and then create a new profile with new settings:

prefect profile use default
prefect config set PREFECT_API_URL=http://127.0.0.1:4200/api

prefect profile create new-profile --from default
prefect profile use new-profile
prefect config set PREFECT_RESULTS_PERSIST_BY_DEFAULT=true PREFECT_LOGGING_LEVEL="ERROR"

prefect profile inspect
prefect config unset PREFECT_LOGGING_LEVEL="ERROR" -y

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Use Environment variables

All settings have keys that match the name of the environment variable that can be used to override them.

For example, we can temporarily set the logging level through an environment variable so that it only lasts for the duration of the command:

PREFECT_LOGGING_LEVEL="CRITICAL" prefect config view --show-sources

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Commonly configured settings

This section describes some commonly configured settings.

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Prefect Cloud

• PREFECT_API_KEY: the PREFECT_API_KEY value specifies the API key used to authenticate with Prefect Cloud.
• PREFECT_API_URL: the PREFECT_API_URL value specifies the API endpoint of your Prefect Cloud workspace or a self-hosted Prefect server instance.

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Prefect server

• PREFECT_HOME: the PREFECT_HOME value specifies the local Prefect directory for configuration files, profiles, and the location of the default Prefect SQLite database.
• PREFECT_API_DATABASE_CONNECTION_URL: the database connection URL for a self-hosted Prefect server instance. Must be provided in a SQLAlchemy-compatible format. Prefect currently supports SQLite and Postgres.

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Security settings

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Host the UI behind a reverse proxy

When using a reverse proxy (such as Nginx or Traefik) to proxy traffic to a hosted Prefect UI instance, you must also configure the self-hosted Prefect server instance to connect to the API. The PREFECT_UI_API_URL should be set to the external proxy URL.

For example, if your external URL is https://prefect-server.example.com then set PREFECT_UI_API_URL=https://prefect-server.example.com/api for the Prefect server process. You can also set PREFECT_API_URL to the API URL.

This setting is a fallback if PREFECT_UI_API_URL is not set.

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CSRF protection settings

If using self-hosted Prefect server, you can configure CSRF protection settings.

• PREFECT_SERVER_CSRF_PROTECTION_ENABLED: activates CSRF protection on the server, requiring valid CSRF tokens for applicable requests. Recommended for production to prevent CSRF attacks. Defaults to False.
• PREFECT_SERVER_CSRF_TOKEN_EXPIRATION: sets the expiration duration for server-issued CSRF tokens, influencing how often tokens need to be refreshed. The default is 1 hour.
• PREFECT_CLIENT_CSRF_SUPPORT_ENABLED: enables or disables CSRF token handling in the Prefect client. When enabled, the client manages CSRF tokens for state-changing API requests. Defaults to True.

By default clients expect that CSRF protection is enabled on the server. If you are running a server without CSRF protection, you can disable CSRF support in the client.