What's the difference between an asset ID and a public ID?

Every asset in Cloudinary has two unique identifiers: a public ID and an asset ID. They aren't interchangeable. The public ID is the name you use in delivery URLs and in most API calls, while the asset ID is an immutable identifier that stays the same even if the public ID changes.

If you're looking for an asset ID in the Media Library and can't find it, that's expected: the Media Library doesn't display it as a field. This page explains how the two identifiers differ, how to retrieve the asset ID, and when to use each one.

How the two identifiers differ

How to retrieve an asset ID

In the upload response

Every upload response includes the asset_id of the newly uploaded asset, so you can store it alongside your own records at upload time:

For details of the other identifiers returned, see Identification.

With the Admin API

If the asset is already in your product environment, get its details by public ID and read the asset_id from the response:

See Get details of a single resource by public ID.

To retrieve asset IDs in bulk, use the Search API. The asset_id field is always included in search results, so you don't need to request it explicitly.

Find the asset ID in the Media Library

The Media Library doesn't show the asset ID as a field in the Summary tab or as a column in List view, but it does appear in the URL of the asset's drill-down page. Double-click an asset to open its drill-down page, then take the value between /asset/ and /manage from the address bar:

In this example, the asset ID is e115700ef8541814f391abf7fed6e1b1.

When to use each identifier

Use the public ID for:

• Building delivery and transformation URLs, either directly or through an SDK.
• The majority of Upload API and Admin API calls, together with the asset type and delivery type.

Use the asset ID for:

• Referencing an asset from your own database or an external system, where you need an identifier that survives renaming an asset, moving it between folders, or changing its display name.
• Admin API methods that accept asset IDs, including get resources by asset IDs, get details of a single resource by asset ID, update details of an existing resource by asset ID, restore resources by asset ID, delete resources by asset ID, add related assets by asset ID, and delete related assets by asset ID.
• Bulk updating structured metadata from a CSV file, where the assetId column is an alternative to the publicId, assetType, and deliveryType columns.
• Using a stored image as a reference image for image generation, by passing its asset_id.