# 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