Enabling unlicensed access to Confluence Cloud spaces via API

Platform Notice: Cloud Only - This article only applies to Atlassian products on the cloud platform.

Summary

When Confluence Cloud and Jira Service Management are integrated, there will have an option to open "unlicensed" access for a space, allowing active users (without a Confluence license) to access the instance and view it. From the UI, this permissioncan only be enabled via the Jira Service Management project connected to a Confluence space.

Even without Jira Service Management integrated or a project linked to a space, an API call can be used in order to have such permissions enabled.

Solution

As a space administrator of Confluence, the following REST API call can be used:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 curl --request POST \ --url 'https://<INSTANCE>.atlassian.net/wiki/rest/knowledge-base/1.0/permissions/space/unlicensedview' \ -u 'user_email@domain.com:<API-TOKEN>' \ --header 'Accept: application/json' \ --header 'Content-Type: application/json' \ -d $'{ "enablePermission": true, "spaceKey": "<SPACE-KEY>" }'

ℹ️ When successful, a message like the following should be displayed:

1 {"spacePermissions":{"spaceKey":"<SPACE-KEY>","unlicensedViewPermissionEnabled":true,"anonymousViewPermissionEnabled":false},"globalPermissions":{"unlicensedAuthenticatedAccessEnabled":true,"anonymousAccessEnabled":false}}%

Notes

Updated on April 15, 2025

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