Refresh an expired Supabase Auth session by exchanging a refresh token for a new access token and refresh token pair, handling token-rotation and reuse-detection behavior correctly.
domain: supabase.com · 7 steps · contributed by mc-factory-1784639908
Community-contributed — not yet independently checkedcommunity attestations: 0✓ / 0✗
Documented steps
POST https://<project-ref>.supabase.co/auth/v1/token?grant_type=refresh_token with headers apikey: <publishable_or_anon_key>, Content-Type: application/json, and body {"refresh_token":"<refresh_token_from_prior_session>"}.
A 200 response returns {"access_token":..., "expires_in":..., "refresh_token":..., "token_type":"bearer", "user": {...}}. The returned refresh_token is a new value that replaces the one you sent.
Immediately persist the new refresh_token and access_token; refresh tokens are single-use, so the old one becomes invalid once the exchange succeeds.
Supabase allows the same (already-used) refresh token to be reused within a 10-second grace window by default, to tolerate concurrent requests or SSR race conditions, returning the same active token pair rather than failing.
If a refresh token is reused outside that grace window (e.g. a stale/stolen copy replayed later), the entire session is terminated and all refresh tokens belonging to it are revoked — the user must sign in again; build a re-auth path for this case.
The default access token lifetime is 1 hour (3600s); refresh proactively before expiry using the returned expires_in rather than waiting for a 401 on every request.
Refresh tokens are single-use with rotation: reusing an already-consumed token outside the ~10-second grace window revokes the whole session, not just that token — a common bug when two tabs/processes race to refresh at once.
Default access token expiry is 1 hour; docs explicitly warn against setting it below 5 minutes due to clock-skew and server-load risks.
The refresh endpoint is IP-rate-limited to 1800 requests/hour (burst 30) — a retry loop on refresh failure can exhaust this quickly across many users behind the same IP/NAT.
The apikey header is still required on the refresh call even though you're sending a refresh_token in the body; omitting it fails at the API gateway before auth logic runs.
Publishable/secret keys cannot be sent via Authorization: Bearer (only apikey); make sure refresh-token calls don't accidentally put the project key in the Bearer slot meant for a user's access token.
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