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Resolving ‘Unauthorized Purge’ errors for CDN cache purge in AEM as a Cloud Service

Last update: October 21, 2026

This article explains how to resolve the Unauthorized Purge. Please setup a PURGE key via Configuration Pipeline. error that occurs when purging CDN cache in Adobe Experience Manager as a Cloud Service. The solution involves reviewing and correcting the CDN configuration file structure and purge key setup.

Description description

Environment

Adobe Experience Manager as a Cloud Service (AEMaaCS) (any environment type)

Symptoms

  • CDN purge requests (such as via curl) fail with a response similar to:

    { "status": "error", "reason": "Unauthorized Purge. Please setup a PURGE key via Configuration Pipeline." }

  • The configuration pipeline completes successfully, and purge keys are present as environment variables.

  • The issue affects one or more environments depending on configuration file structure.

Cause

The most common cause is that the CDN configuration files aren’t organized according to the recommended environment-level structure, or there are duplicate or conflicting variable definitions. As a result, the purge authenticator isn’t applied, and purge requests are rejected as unauthorized.

Resolution resolution

Follow the steps below to resolve the issue:

  1. Review your CDN configuration file structure in your code repository:

    • Ensure that CDN configuration files are organized according to Adobe’s recommended environment-level structure. For example, use a flat structure with one file per environment, such as cdn-stage.yaml for Staging and cdn-prod.yaml for Production, each specifying the appropriate envTypes.

    • Avoid placing CDN configuration files in subfolders that aren’t evaluated by Cloud Manager for environment-level settings.

    • Remove any duplicate or conflicting CDN configuration files that may apply to the same environment.

  2. Check purge key secret variable assignment:

    • Verify that the purge key secrets (For example: CDN_PURGEKEY_PRIMARY, CDN_PURGEKEY_SECONDARY, or environment-specific equivalents) are configured as environment variables before running the configuration pipeline.

    • Ensure that the Service Applied field for these secrets is set to All and not limited to a specific service.

  3. Remove duplicate variable definitions:

    • Don’t configure the same variable as both a pipeline variable and an environment variable. Use only one method for each variable.

    • If environment-specific variables are required, retain only the environment variables and remove the pipeline variables (or vice versa, if not required).

  4. Redeploy the configuration using the Cloud Manager configuration pipeline.

    • Wait for the deployment to complete successfully.

  5. Validate purge functionality:

    • Retry the CDN purge request using the correct purge key in the X-AEM-Purge-Key header.

    • Example curl command:

    code language-none 
    curl -X PURGE "https:///content/..." \
-H "X-AEM-Purge-Key: " \
-H "X-AEM-Purge: soft"
    • Confirm that the response is successful (For example: { "status": "ok" }).
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