Data Transfer API 401 error with service account (Domain-wide Delegation), but Directory API works

Question

I'm trying to use a service account with domain-wide delegation to transfer Google Drive data between users in my Workspace domain. The service account works fine with Directory API, but the Data Transfer API always returns a 401 UNAUTHENTICATED error.

What I did:

Service account added in Admin Console > Security > API Controls > Domain-wide delegation

Scopes:

https://www.googleapis.com/auth/admin.directory.user, https://www.googleapis.com/auth/admin.datatransfer

All users (origin and destination) are active, have Google Workspace Business Standard, and Drive is enabled

API is enabled in Google Cloud Console

Waited for propagation, tried new JSON, tried multiple users

    creds = service_account.Credentials.from_service_account_file(
    "service-account.json", scopes=SCOPES
).with_subject("[email protected]")
dt_service = build('admin', 'datatransfer_v1', credentials=creds)
body = {
    "oldOwnerUserId": "[email protected]",
    "newOwnerUserId": "[email protected]",
    "applicationDataTransfers": [
        {"applicationId": "435070579839", "transferAllData": True}
    ]
}
dt_service.transfers().insert(body=body).execute()

401: Request is missing required authentication credential.

Directory API with the same service account works perfectly. What could be missing or wrong? Anyone else faced this?

Saddles · Accepted Answer · 2025-06-17 22:17:57Z

0

Use the Correct Application ID for Each Service

You're receiving a 401 UNAUTHENTICATED error because Google APIs require specific applicationId values for different services.

What you're currently using is for Google Calendar.

The correct applicationId for Google Drive is:

Google Docs and Google Drive (Application ID: 55656082996)

Reference

Transfer parameters

edited Jun 17 at 22:17

Saddles

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answered Jun 17 at 17:38

Gyul

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Gyul Jun 18 at 13:18

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