Error: AWS DynamoDB CredentialsError: Missing credentials in config
Answered by Rafal Wilinski
Last updated: October 23rd, 2026
Solution
The credential provider chain did not find usable AWS credentials. This happens before DynamoDB can evaluate table permissions; adding a table policy does not supply credentials to the process.
- Select the intended AWS profile and verify it with
aws sts get-caller-identity --profile work. - For IAM Identity Center, run
aws sso login --profile workand retry. - In Lambda, ECS or EC2, use the runtime's IAM role and check that the process can obtain its temporary credentials.
- Check for stale environment credentials overriding the profile. Temporary credentials require a session token as well as the access-key pair.
Keep credentials out of source code. A successful CLI command does not prove a different SDK process uses the same profile or configuration files. See AWS credential providers and SSO profiles in Dynobase.
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