# Access Tokens All Mapbox APIs require an access token. Thus all service object constructors take an `access_token` keyword argument. Access can be granted to a geocoding service, for example, like so: ```python >>> from mapbox import Geocoder >>> geocoder = Geocoder(access_token="pk.YOUR_ACCESS_TOKEN") ``` Please note that an actual token string must be used. Tokens may be generated using the web application at [https://www.mapbox.com/account/access-tokens](https://www.mapbox.com/account/access-tokens). Your Mapbox access token can also be set in the environment of your program ```bash export MAPBOX_ACCESS_TOKEN="pk.YOUR_ACCESS_TOKEN" ``` and it will be found automatically when creating a new instance. We'll use the `Geocoder` in this example but the same applies for all `mapbox` classes. ```python >>> geocoder = Geocoder() >>> import os >>> geocoder.session.params['access_token'] == os.environ['MAPBOX_ACCESS_TOKEN'] True ``` Best practice for access tokens and geocoding sources is to create a new instance for each new access token or source dataset. ## Special considerations You access token can be associated with different *scopes*. **TODO** How to get an access token. **TODO**