# NuGet package publishing using API key

## post by Vilius_Sumskas on Aug 4, 2025

I’m trying to setup NuGet package repository on Community Edition. Documentation here [NuGet Repositories](https://help.sonatype.com/en/nuget-repositories.html#publishing-to-a-hosted-repository) implies that it is possible to use API key as a ClearTextPassword field for publishing, however no matter what I try this doesn’t work. Repository Manager always returns 401. If I try a user password instead, everything starts to work. If I use the same API key in my main nuget.config file by setting it via `nuget setapikey` it also works. Just not when the key is used as a clear text environment variable.

I have also found this older post [Authenticating to NuGet Hosted Repo with Tokens](https://community.sonatype.com/t/authenticating-to-nuget-hosted-repo-with-tokens/7132) which vaguely confirms that API key for NuGet publishing should work, but doesn’t say in which configuration.

Is this a mistake in the documentation and I must always use `nuget setapikey` or am I doing something wrong? I’m now starting to think that’s documentation issue because here [NuGet Repositories](https://help.sonatype.com/en/nuget-repositories.html#setting-environment-variables) the variable is named NEXUS_PASSWORD which doesn’t match %NEXUS_API_KEY% in the example configuration above.

## post by mpiggott on Aug 5, 2025

Have you enabled the realm as described in the help documentation? [NuGet Repositories](https://help.sonatype.com/en/nuget-repositories.html#accessing-the-nuget-api-key) (link should go to the subsection)

## post by Vilius_Sumskas on Aug 6, 2025

Yes, the realm is enabled. As I said, the API key works in a context of `<apiKeys>` `nuget.config` configuration option, but doesn’t work “in place” of a password, like documentation suggest it should.

## post by Vilius_Sumskas on Aug 25, 2025

Any more ideas?