Roles that Grant Access to App Engine

Roles determine which services and actions are available to a user account or service account. The following types of roles grant access to App Engine:

• Basic roles which apply to all services and resources in a project, including but not limited App Engine. For example, an account with the Editor role can change App Engine settings as well as Cloud Storage settings.

• Predefined App Engine roles, which provide granular access to App Engine. Each service in your Google Cloud project provides its own predefined roles. For example, an account that only has the App Engine Deployer role can deploy App Engine apps but cannot view or create objects in Cloud Storage. Such an account would also need a specific Cloud Storage predefined role to create or view objects in Cloud Storage.

• Custom roles, which provide granular access according to a list of permissions you specify.

You can use basic roles when you are working on smaller projects that have less complex needs. For more fine-tuned access controls, use predefined roles.

Basic roles

Basic roles apply to all services and resources in a project. For example, an account in the Editor role can change App Engine settings as well as Cloud Storage settings.

Role	Google Cloud console permissions	Tools permissions
Owner	Required to create App Engine applications. All viewer and editor privileges, plus the ability to view deployed source code, invite users, change user roles, and delete an application.	Required to create App Engine applications. Can also deploy application code and update all configurations.
Editor	View application information and edit application settings.	Deploy application code, update indexes/queues/crons.
Viewer	View application information.	Request logs

Predefined App Engine roles

Role	Permissions
App Engine Admin (roles/appengine.appAdmin) Read/Write/Modify access to all application configuration and settings. To deploy new versions, a principal must have the Service Account User (roles/iam.serviceAccountUser) role on the assigned App Engine service account, and the Cloud Build Editor (roles/cloudbuild.builds.editor), and Cloud Storage Object Admin (roles/storage.objectAdmin) roles on the project. Lowest-level resources where you can grant this role: Project	appengine.applications.get appengine.applications.listRuntimes appengine.applications.update appengine.instances.* appengine.instances.delete appengine.instances.enableDebug appengine.instances.get appengine.instances.list appengine.memcache.addKey appengine.memcache.flush appengine.memcache.get appengine.memcache.update appengine.operations.* appengine.operations.get appengine.operations.list appengine.runtimes.actAsAdmin appengine.services.* appengine.services.delete appengine.services.get appengine.services.list appengine.services.update appengine.versions.create appengine.versions.delete appengine.versions.get appengine.versions.list appengine.versions.update resourcemanager.projects.get resourcemanager.projects.list
App Engine Creator (roles/appengine.appCreator) Ability to create the App Engine resource for the project. Lowest-level resources where you can grant this role: Project	appengine.applications.create resourcemanager.projects.get resourcemanager.projects.list
App Engine Viewer (roles/appengine.appViewer) Read-only access to all application configuration and settings. Lowest-level resources where you can grant this role: Project	appengine.applications.get appengine.applications.listRuntimes appengine.instances.get appengine.instances.list appengine.operations.* appengine.operations.get appengine.operations.list appengine.services.get appengine.services.list appengine.versions.get appengine.versions.list resourcemanager.projects.get resourcemanager.projects.list
App Engine Code Viewer (roles/appengine.codeViewer) Read-only access to all application configuration, settings, and deployed source code. Lowest-level resources where you can grant this role: Project	appengine.applications.get appengine.applications.listRuntimes appengine.instances.get appengine.instances.list appengine.operations.* appengine.operations.get appengine.operations.list appengine.services.get appengine.services.list appengine.versions.get appengine.versions.getFileContents appengine.versions.list resourcemanager.projects.get resourcemanager.projects.list
App Engine Managed VM Debug Access (roles/appengine.debugger) Ability to read or manage v2 instances.	appengine.applications.get appengine.applications.listRuntimes appengine.instances.* appengine.instances.delete appengine.instances.enableDebug appengine.instances.get appengine.instances.list appengine.operations.* appengine.operations.get appengine.operations.list appengine.services.get appengine.services.list appengine.versions.get appengine.versions.list resourcemanager.projects.get resourcemanager.projects.list
App Engine Deployer (roles/appengine.deployer) Read-only access to all application configuration and settings. To deploy new versions, you must also have the Service Account User (roles/iam.serviceAccountUser) role on the assigned App Engine service account, and the Cloud Build Editor (roles/cloudbuild.builds.editor), and Cloud Storage Object Admin (roles/storage.objectAdmin) roles on the project. Cannot modify existing versions other than deleting versions that are not receiving traffic. Lowest-level resources where you can grant this role: Project	appengine.applications.get appengine.applications.listRuntimes appengine.instances.get appengine.instances.list appengine.operations.* appengine.operations.get appengine.operations.list appengine.services.get appengine.services.list appengine.versions.create appengine.versions.delete appengine.versions.get appengine.versions.list artifactregistry.repositories.deleteArtifacts artifactregistry.repositories.downloadArtifacts artifactregistry.repositories.uploadArtifacts resourcemanager.projects.get resourcemanager.projects.list
App Engine Memcache Data Admin (roles/appengine.memcacheDataAdmin) Can get, set, delete, and flush App Engine Memcache items.	appengine.applications.get appengine.memcache.addKey appengine.memcache.flush appengine.memcache.get appengine.memcache.update resourcemanager.projects.get resourcemanager.projects.list
App Engine Service Admin (roles/appengine.serviceAdmin) Read-only access to all application configuration and settings. Write access to module-level and version-level settings. Cannot deploy a new version. Lowest-level resources where you can grant this role: Project	appengine.applications.get appengine.applications.listRuntimes appengine.instances.delete appengine.instances.get appengine.instances.list appengine.operations.* appengine.operations.get appengine.operations.list appengine.services.* appengine.services.delete appengine.services.get appengine.services.list appengine.services.update appengine.versions.delete appengine.versions.get appengine.versions.list appengine.versions.update resourcemanager.projects.get resourcemanager.projects.list

The predefined roles for App Engine provide you with finer grained options for access control.

These roles only provide access to App Engine. If your project includes other services, such as Cloud Storage or Cloud SQL, you will need to assign additional roles to enable access to the other services.

Note: To use App Engine tooling such as the gcloud command line tool or the Admin API an account must have the Storage Admin and Cloud Build Editor roles.

Comparison of App Engine predefined roles

The following table provides a complete comparison of the capabilities of each predefined App Engine role.

Capability	App Engine Admin	App Engine Service Admin	App Engine Deployer	App Engine Viewer	App Engine Code Viewer
List all services, versions and instances	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
View all application, service, version, and instance settings	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
View runtime metrics such as resource usage, load information, and error information	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
View app source code	No	No	No	No	Yes
Deploy a new version of an app	Yes, if you also grant the Service Account User role	No	Yes, if you also grant the Service Account User role	No	No
Split or migrate traffic	Yes	Yes	No^***	No	No
Start and stop a version	Yes	Yes	No	No	No
Delete a version	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	No
Delete an entire service	Yes	Yes	No	No	No
Use SSH to connect to a VM instance in the flexible environment	Yes	No	No	No	No
Shut down an instance	Yes	No	No	No	No
Disable and re-enable the App Engine application	Yes	No	No	No	No
Access handlers that have a login:admin restriction (first generation runtimes only)	Yes	No	No	No	No
Update dispatch rules	Yes	No	No	No	No
Update DoS settings	Yes	No	No	No	No
Update cron schedules	No	No	No	No	No
Update default cookie expiration	Yes	No	No	No	No
Update referrers	Yes	No	No	No	No
Update Email API Authorized Senders	Yes	No	No	No	No

Note: The predefined roles are enforced in the Google Cloud console, the Admin API, and other tooling that requires access, including the deployment commands.

For details about the specific IAM permissions that are granted by each role, see the Roles section of the Admin API.

Recommended role for application deployment

For an account that is responsible only for deploying new versions of an app, we recommend that you grant the following roles:

• App Engine Deployer role (roles/appengine.deployer)

• Service Account User role (roles/iam.serviceAccountUser)

  The Service Account User role enables the account to impersonate the default App Engine service account during the deployment process.

• If the account uses gcloud commands to deploy, add these roles as well:

  • Storage Object Admin (roles/storage.objectAdmin)
  • Cloud Build Editor (roles/cloudbuild.builds.editor)

Note: If you have granted an account the App Engine Admin role, you don't need to grant it the App Engine Deployer role, because the Admin role holds the same relevant permissions as the Deployer role, along with additional administrative privileges. We recommend using the App Engine Deployer role for accounts that are responsible only for deploying new versions.

For details about how to grant the required permissions, see Creating a user account.

Separation of deployment and traffic routing duties

Many organizations prefer to separate the task of deploying an application version from the task of ramping up traffic to the newly created version, and to have these tasks done by different job functions. The App Engine Deployer and App Engine Service Admin roles provide this separation:

• App Engine Deployer plus Service Account User roles - Accounts are limited to deploying new versions and deleting old versions that are not serving traffic. The account with these roles won't be able to configure traffic to any version nor change application-level settings such as dispatch rules or authentication domain.
• App Engine Service Admin role - Accounts cannot deploy a new version of an app nor change application-level settings. However, those accounts have privileges to change the properties of existing services and versions, including changing which versions can serve traffic. The App Engine Service Admin role is ideal for an Operations/IT department that handles ramping up traffic to newly deployed versions.

Note: Accounts with the App Engine Deployer role can overwrite a version that is serving traffic by deploying a new version with the same name (using the --version flag).

Limitations of the predefined roles

None of the App Engine predefined roles grant access to the following:

• View and download application logs.
• View Monitoring charts in the Google Cloud console.
• Enable and Disable billing.
• Run security scans in Cloud Security Scanner.
• Access configuration or data stored in Datastore, Task Queues, Cloud Search or any other Cloud Platform storage product.