Services or capabilities described in Amazon Web Services documentation might vary by Region. To see the differences applicable to the China Regions, see Getting Started with Amazon Web Services in China (PDF).

Identify Amazon resources with Amazon Resource Names (ARNs)

Amazon Resource Names (ARNs) uniquely identify Amazon resources. We require an ARN when you need to specify a resource unambiguously across all of Amazon, such as in IAM policies, Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS) tags, and API calls. While ARNs, like any identifying information, should be used and shared carefully, they are not considered secret, sensitive, or confidential information.

ARN format

The following are the general formats for ARNs. The specific formats depend on the resource. To use an ARN, replace the italicized text with the resource-specific information. Be aware that the ARNs for some resources omit the Region, the account ID, or both the Region and the account ID.

arn:partition:service:region:account-id:resource-id
arn:partition:service:region:account-id:resource-type/resource-id
arn:partition:service:region:account-id:resource-type:resource-id

Look up the ARN format for a resource

The exact format of an ARN depends on the service and resource type. Some resource ARNs can include a path, a variable, or a wildcard. To look up the ARN format for a specific Amazon resource, open the Service Authorization Reference, open the page for the service, and navigate to the resource types table.

Paths in ARNs

Resource ARNs can include a path. For example, in Amazon S3, the resource identifier is an object name that can include forward slashes (/) to form a path. Similarly, IAM user names and group names can include paths. Only alphanumeric characters and the following characters are allowed in IAM paths: forward slash (/), plus (+), equals (=), comma (,), period (.), at (@), underscore (_), and hyphen (-).

Using wildcards in paths

Paths can include a wildcard character, namely an asterisk (*). Some policy elements allow wildcards while others don't. You can use wildcards for the Resource or NotResource elements but not for the Principal or NotPrincipal elements. For more information, see IAM JSON policy reference.

You can specify role/* to mean all roles in the account 123456789012 as in the following example:

arn:aws:iam::123456789012:role/*

You can also end a resource name with a wildcard. For example, you can specify service-* to mean all roles starting with service and ending with different characters like service-role1 or service-test:

arn:aws:iam::123456789012:role/service-*

The following example shows ARNs for objects in an Amazon S3 bucket in which the resource name includes a path. The ARN arn:aws:s3:::amzn-s3-demo-bucket/* is for all objects within that bucket, regardless of prefix. The ARN arn:aws:s3:::amzn-s3-demo-bucket/Development/* is for all objects created within the /Development/ prefix.

You can also use the ? wildcard character to specify one character in an ARN. For example, you could use the following ARN for all folders starting with four characters and ending in -test in the S3 bucket named amzn-s3-demo-bucket. Some folders that would match this include 1234-test, 2024-test, or a100-test.

arn:aws:s3:::amzn-s3-demo-bucket/????-test

You can also use wildcards in the different sections of an ARN, deliminated by a colon “:”. In the following example, two wildcards are used to match all Amazon Q applications and resources within the applications in all regions for account 123456789012:

arn:aws:qbusiness:*:123456789012:*

Similarly, the following example matches all Amazon VPCs in all regions for account 123456789012:

arn:aws:ec2:*:123456789012:vpc/*

The following example matches all Amazon EBS volumes in all regions for account 123456789012:

arn:aws:ec2:*:123456789012:volume/*

Limitations on wildcard usage within ARNs

You cannot use a wildcard in the portion of the ARN that specifics the resource type. The following example ARN with a wildcard within the resource type is not valid:

arn:aws:lambda:us-east-2:123456789012:functi*:my-function <== not allowed 

You also cannot use a wildcard in the prefix ARN, or have a wildcard in the partition section of an ARN.

arn:aws:redshift:us-east-1:123456789012:? <== not allowed