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What custom token do I need for certbot?

Posted on January 22, 2026
erel

By erel

I use Let’s Encrypt and run certbot for automatic renewal. I get an error saying that certbot needs a Digital Ocean token. But when I try to add a token with custom permissions, there are many different options (“scopes”). I can just mark all scopes, but I want to give only the minimal scopes needed.

What scopes should I choose, when creating a new token, so that certbot can work?



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Heya, @erel

If you’re using certbot with the DigitalOcean DNS plugin, the token only needs read + write access to Domains (DNS). That’s it — certbot creates and deletes the temporary _acme-challenge TXT records during validation.

You don’t need Droplets, Volumes, Firewalls, or anything else. In the API token screen on DigitalOcean, just enable Domains → Read + Write. This works for DNS-01 challenges with Let’s Encrypt and keeps the token properly locked down.

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