You Have Three Options to Authenticate to the Cortex REST API — Here’s How Each One Works

A practical guide to all three authentication methods for the Snowflake Cortex REST API: Programmatic Access Tokens (PAT), Key-Pair JWT, and OAuth Authorization Code Grant. Each method is explained with complete, runnable Python code hitting the same chat completions endpoint. PAT is recommended for quick starts, JWT for headless backend services, and OAuth when end users authenticate via browser. Security tips and setup instructions are included for each approach, along with a decision guide for choosing the right method.