Bucket policies overview

Reviewed on July 30, 2025

What are bucket policies

A bucket policy is a resource-based policy option. It allows you to grant more granular access to Object Storage resources.

By default, all Object Storage resources in a Project are private and can be accessed only by users or applications with IAM permissions. Adding a bucket policy to a bucket allows you to specify who can perform which actions on a bucket and the objects it contains. You can combine the different elements of a bucket policy to tailor your permissions according to your use case.

The different elements of a bucket policy allow you to configure fine-grained permissions when combined with Identity and Access Management (IAM), as shown in the table below.

Bucket policies behave like objects: they can be uploaded into buckets. Once you upload, or "put" a bucket policy into a bucket, it takes immediate effect and will from then on define who can access and perform actions on the bucket, and the objects it contains.

Important

You will lose access to your bucket if you are not the owner of the Organization, and if you are not explicitly allowed by the bucket policy.
The owner of the Organization always has the right to put and delete bucket policies, even if he is not allowed to perform other bucket operations by the bucket policy.
Each bucket can have only one bucket policy.
Pushing a new bucket policy to a bucket overwrites any existing bucket policy.

Bucket policies versions

Version ID	Lifecycle status
`2023-04-17`	Current
`2012-10-17`	Deprecated

The 2012-10-17 version is deprecated, and its usage is strongly discouraged.
With the 2023-04-17 version, only actions explicitly allowed by the bucket policy are permitted, if the principal is also allowed by an IAM policy. Deny statements are therefore useless.

Bucket policies description

Bucket policies use a JSON-based access policy language, and are composed of strings, such as: Version, Id, Statement, Sid, Principal, Action, Effect, Resource, and Condition.

Version

Description: IAM syntax version
Required: Yes
Type: string
Value: "2023-04-17"

Sample:

{
    "Version": "2023-04-17",
    "Id": "MyBucketPolicy",
    "Statement": [
        {
            "Sid": "Delegate access",
            "Effect":"Allow",
            "Principal": {
                "SCW": "user_id:<USER_ID>"
            },
            "Action": "s3:ListBucket",
            "Resource": "<BUCKET_NAME>"
        }
    ]
}

Note

Refer to the documentation on bucket policy versions for more information.

Id

Description: Information about the policy as a whole. The length is limited to 280 characters.
Required: No
Type: string

Sample

{
    "Version": "2023-04-17",
    "Id": "MyBucketPolicy",
    "Statement": [
        {
            "Sid": "Delegate access",
            "Effect":"Allow",
            "Principal":{
                "SCW":"application_id:<APPLICATION_ID>"
            },
            "Action":[
                "s3:ListBucket",
                "s3:GetObject"
            ],
            "Resource":[
                "<BUCKET_NAME>",
                "<BUCKET_NAME>/*"
            ]
        }
    ]
}

Statement

Description: Statement defines the rules that should be respected by our policy engine.
Children: Sid, Principal, Action, Effect and Resource
Required: No
Type: array

Samples

{
    "Version": "2023-04-17",
    "Id":"MyBucketPolicy",
    "Statement": [
        {
            "Sid": "Delegate access",
            "Effect":"Allow",
            "Principal":{
                "SCW":"user_id:<USER_ID>"
            },
            "Action":[
                "s3:ListBucket",
                "s3:GetObject"
            ],
            "Resource":[
                "<BUCKET_NAME>",
                "<BUCKET_NAME>/*"
            ]
        },
        {
            "Sid": "Delegate PUT to application",
            "Effect":"Allow",
            "Principal":{
                "SCW":"application_id:<APPLICATION_ID>"
            },
            "Action":"s3:PutObject",
            "Resource":"<BUCKET_NAME>/*"
        }
    ]
}

{
    "Version": "2023-04-17",
    "Id":"MyBucketPolicy",
    "Statement": [
        {
            "Sid": "Delegate access to user",
            "Effect":"Allow",
            "Principal":{
                "SCW":"user_id:<USER_ID>"
            },
            "Action":[
                "s3:ListBucket",
                "s3:GetObject"
            ],
            "Resource":[
                "<BUCKET_NAME>",
                "<BUCKET_NAME>/*"
            ]
        },
        {
            "Sid": "Delegate PUT to application",
            "Effect":"Allow",
            "Principal":{
                "SCW":"application_id:<APPLICATION_ID>"
            },
            "Action":"s3:PutObject",
            "Resource":"<BUCKET_NAME>/*"
        }
    ]
}

Sid

Description: Statement ID. Provides a way to include information about an individual statement.
Required: No
Parent: Statement
Type: string

Sample

{
    "Version": "2023-04-17",
    "Id":"MyBucketPolicy",
    "Statement": [
        {
            "Sid": "Grant list to user",
            "Effect":"Allow",
            "Principal":{
                "SCW":"user_id:<USER_ID>"
            },
            "Action":"s3:ListBucket",
            "Resource":"<BUCKET_NAME>"
        }
    ]
}

Effect

Description: Uses the Allow value to authorize the specified actions. All actions that are not explicitly allowed are denied, Deny statements are therefore useless.
Required: Yes
Parent: Statement

Sample

{
    "Version": "2023-04-17",
    "Id":"MyBucketPolicy",
    "Statement": [
        {
            "Sid": "Grant List and GET to user and application",
            "Effect":"Allow",
            "Principal":{
                "SCW":[
                    "user_id:<USER_ID>",
                    "application_id:<APPLICATION_ID>"
                ]
            },
            "Action":[
                "s3:ListBucket",
                "s3:GetObject"
            ],
            "Resource":[
                "<BUCKET_NAME>",
                "<BUCKET_NAME>/*"
            ]
        }
    ]
}

Principal

Description: Defines the targets of the bucket policy, which can be a user or an application. You must use user_id and/or application_id, or * to grant access to "everyone".
Required: Yes
Parent: Statement

Important

If you want to use bucket policies to grant access to Object Storage resources, you must always specify to which principal (user or application) you are attributing the policy, even if they are the Owner of the Organization. If the Owner of the Organization does not have access rights to resources via a policy, they still have inherent rights to create and edit bucket policies and can add themselves as principals to a policy anytime.

Sample

{
    "Version": "2023-04-17",
    "Id":"MyBucketPolicy",
    "Statement": [
        {
            "Sid": "Grant List and GET to everyone",
            "Effect":"Allow",
            "Principal":"*",
            "Action":[
                "s3:ListBucket",
                "s3:GetObject"
            ],
            "Resource":[
                "<BUCKET_NAME>",
                "<BUCKET_NAME>/*"
            ]
        }
    ]
}

{
    "Version": "2023-04-17",
    "Id":"MyBucketPolicy",
    "Statement": [
        {
            "Sid": "Grant List and GET to user",
            "Effect":"Allow",
            "Principal":{
                "SCW":"user_id:<USER_ID>"
            },
            "Action":[
                "s3:ListBucket",
                "s3:GetObject"
            ],
            "Resource":[
                "<BUCKET_NAME>",
                "<BUCKET_NAME>/*"
            ]
        }
    ]
}

{
    "Version": "2023-04-17",
    "Id":"MyBucketPolicy",
    "Statement": [
        {
            "Sid": "Grant List and GET to user and application",
            "Effect":"Allow",
            "Principal":{
                "SCW":[
                    "user_id:<USER_ID>",
                    "application_id:<APPLICATION_ID>"
                ]
            },
            "Action":[
                "s3:ListBucket",
                "s3:GetObject"
            ],
            "Resource":[
                "<BUCKET_NAME>",
                "<BUCKET_NAME>/*"
            ]
        }
    ]
}

Action

Description: Consists of an Amazon S3 namespace, a colon, and the name of an action. Refer to the list below for supported actions.
Required: Yes
Parent: Statement

Sample

{
    "Version": "2023-04-17",
    "Id":"MyBucketPolicy",
    "Statement": [
        {
            "Sid": "Grant List and GET to user and application",
            "Effect":"Allow",
            "Principal":{
                "SCW":[
                    "user_id:<USER_ID>",
                    "application_id:<APPLICATION_ID>"
                ]
            },
            "Action":"*",
            "Resource":[
                "<BUCKET_NAME>",
                "<BUCKET_NAME>/*"
            ]
        }
    ]
}

Supported actions

To view the bucket policy action corresponding to each Object Storage API operation, refer to the dedicated documentation.

Supported global actions

*
s3:*

Supported bucket actions

s3:DeleteBucketWebsite
s3:GetBucketAcl
s3:GetBucketCORS
s3:GetBucketLocation
s3:GetBucketObjectLockConfiguration
s3:GetBucketTagging
s3:GetBucketVersioning
s3:GetBucketWebsite
s3:GetLifecycleConfiguration
s3:ListBucket
s3:ListBucketMultipartUploads
s3:ListBucketVersions
s3:PutBucketAcl
s3:PutBucketCORS
s3:PutBucketObjectLockConfiguration
s3:PutBucketTagging
s3:PutBucketVersioning
s3:PutBucketWebsite
s3:PutLifecycleConfiguration

Supported object actions

s3:AbortMultipartUpload
s3:DeleteObject
s3:DeleteObjectTagging
s3:DeleteObjectVersion
s3:DeleteObjectVersionTagging
s3:GetObject
s3:GetObjectAcl
s3:GetObjectLegalHold
s3:GetObjectRetention
s3:GetObjectTagging
s3:GetObjectVersion
s3:GetObjectVersionTagging
s3:ListMultipartUploadParts
s3:PutObject
s3:PutObjectAcl
s3:PutObjectLegalHold
s3:PutObjectRetention
s3:PutObjectTagging
s3:PutObjectVersionTagging
s3:RestoreObject

Resource

Description: Consists in the Amazon S3 resource path.
Required: Yes
Parent: Statement

Sample

<BUCKET_NAME> - Grants access to the bucket, but not to the objects inside. If the s3:ListBucket action is applied, this resource specification is required.
<BUCKET_NAME>/* - Grants access to all objects inside a bucket, but not to the bucket itself. If the s3:PutObject, s3:GetObject and s3:DeleteObject actions are applied, this resource specification is required.
<BUCKET_NAME>/<PREFIX>/* - Grants access only to objects with the specified prefix inside a bucket, but not to the bucket itself.

{
    "Version": "2023-04-17",
    "Id":"MyBucketPolicy",
    "Statement": [
        {
            "Sid": "Grant List and GET to user and application",
            "Effect":"Allow",
            "Principal":{
                "SCW":[
                    "user_id:<USER_ID>",
                    "application_id:<APPLICATION_ID>"
                ]
            },
            "Action":[
                "s3:ListBucket",
                "s3:GetObject"
            ],
            "Resource":[
                "<BUCKET_NAME>",
                "<BUCKET_NAME>/*"
            ]
        }
    ]
}

{
    "Version": "2023-04-17",
    "Id":"MyBucketPolicy",
    "Statement": [
        {
            "Sid": "Grant List and GET to user and application",
            "Effect":"Allow",
            "Principal":{
                "SCW":[
                    "user_id:<USER_ID>",
                    "application_id:<APPLICATION_ID>"
                ]
            },
            "Action":[
                "s3:ListBucket",
                "s3:GetObject"
            ],
            "Resource":[
                "<BUCKET_NAME>",
                "<BUCKET_NAME>/photos/*"
            ]
        }
    ]
}

Condition

Description: The Condition element allows you to specify conditions for when a Policy is in effect.
Required: No
Parent: Statement
Condition keys: aws:SourceIp, aws:Referer, aws:CurrentTime, aws:EpochTime, s3:prefix

Examples

You can use the IpAddress condition to Allow actions for specific IP ranges or addresses.

{
  "Version": "2023-04-17",
  "Id": "MyBucketPolicy",
  "Statement": [
    {
      "Sid": "Grant List and GET from my Instances",
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Principal": "*",
      "Action": ["s3:ListBucket", "s3:GetObject"],
      "Resource": ["<BUCKET_NAME>", "<BUCKET_NAME>/*"],
      "Condition": {
        "IpAddress": {
          "aws:SourceIp": "192.0.2.0/24"
        }
      }
    }
  ]
}

You can allow access only within a set timeframe, by implementing the DateGreaterThan and DateLessThan conditions.

{
  "Version": "2023-04-17",
  "Id": "MyBucketPolicy",
  "Statement": [
    {
      "Sid": "Grant List and GET to user for 10 years",
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Principal": {
        "SCW": "user_id:<USER_ID>"
      },
      "Action": ["s3:ListBucket", "s3:GetObject"],
      "Resource": ["<BUCKET_NAME>", "<BUCKET_NAME>/photos/*"],
      "Condition": {
        "DateGreaterThan": {
          "aws:CurrentTime": "2020-01-01T00:00:00Z"
        },
        "DateLessThan": {
          "aws:CurrentTime": "2030-01-01T00:00:00Z"
        }
      }
    }
  ]
}

You can also allow access according to the HTTP referer.

{
  "Version": "2023-04-17",
  "Id": "MyBucketPolicy",
  "Statement": [
    {
      "Sid": "Allow access to assets from my website",
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Principal": "*",
      "Action": "s3:GetObject",
      "Resource": ["<BUCKET_NAME>/assets/*"],
      "Condition": {
        "StringLike": {
          "aws:Referer": "https://console.scaleway.com/*"
        }
      }
    }
  ]
}

Supported conditions

IpAddress
NotIpAddress
StringEquals
StringNotEquals
StringEqualsIgnoreCase
StringNotEqualsIgnoreCase
StringLike
StringNotLike
DateGreaterThan
DateGreaterThanEquals
DateLessThan
DateLessThanEquals

Refer to our dedicated documentation for more information on managing bucket permissions for IP addresses or ranges of IP.

Still need help?

Create a support ticket