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CopyObject - Amazon S3
Request SyntaxURI Request ParametersRequest BodyResponse SyntaxResponse ElementsErrorsExamplesSee Also

CopyObject

Creates a copy of an object that is already stored in Amazon S3.

Important

End of support notice: As of October 1, 2025, Amazon S3 has discontinued support for Email Grantee Access Control Lists (ACLs). If you attempt to use an Email Grantee ACL in a request after October 1, 2025, the request will receive an HTTP 405 (Method Not Allowed) error.

This change affects the following AWS Regions: US East (N. Virginia), US West (N. California), US West (Oregon), Asia Pacific (Singapore), Asia Pacific (Sydney), Asia Pacific (Tokyo), Europe (Ireland), and South America (São Paulo).

Note

You can store individual objects of up to 50 TB in Amazon S3. You create a copy of your object up to 5 GB in size in a single atomic action using this API. However, to copy an object greater than 5 GB, you must use the multipart upload Upload Part - Copy (UploadPartCopy) API. For more information, see Copy Object Using the REST Multipart Upload API.

You can copy individual objects between general purpose buckets, between directory buckets, and between general purpose buckets and directory buckets.

Note

  • Amazon S3 supports copy operations using Multi-Region Access Points only as a destination when using the Multi-Region Access Point ARN.

  • Directory buckets - For directory buckets, you must make requests for this API operation to the Zonal endpoint. These endpoints support virtual-hosted-style requests in the format https://amzn-s3-demo-bucket.s3express-zone-id.region-code.amazonaws.com/key-name . Path-style requests are not supported. For more information about endpoints in Availability Zones, see Regional and Zonal endpoints for directory buckets in Availability Zones in the Amazon S3 User Guide. For more information about endpoints in Local Zones, see Concepts for directory buckets in Local Zones in the Amazon S3 User Guide.

  • VPC endpoints don't support cross-Region requests (including copies). If you're using VPC endpoints, your source and destination buckets should be in the same AWS Region as your VPC endpoint.

Both the Region that you want to copy the object from and the Region that you want to copy the object to must be enabled for your account. For more information about how to enable a Region for your account, see Enable or disable a Region for standalone accounts in the AWS Account Management Guide.

Important

Amazon S3 transfer acceleration does not support cross-Region copies. If you request a cross-Region copy using a transfer acceleration endpoint, you get a 400 Bad Request error. For more information, see Transfer Acceleration.

Authentication and authorization

All CopyObject requests must be authenticated and signed by using IAM credentials (access key ID and secret access key for the IAM identities). All headers with the x-amz- prefix, including x-amz-copy-source, must be signed. For more information, see REST Authentication.

Directory buckets - You must use the IAM credentials to authenticate and authorize your access to the CopyObject API operation, instead of using the temporary security credentials through the CreateSession API operation.

AWS CLI or SDKs handles authentication and authorization on your behalf.

Permissions

You must have read access to the source object and write access to the destination bucket.

  • General purpose bucket permissions - You must have permissions in an IAM policy based on the source and destination bucket types in a CopyObject operation.

    • If the source object is in a general purpose bucket, you must have s3:GetObject permission to read the source object that is being copied.

    • If the destination bucket is a general purpose bucket, you must have s3:PutObject permission to write the object copy to the destination bucket.

  • Directory bucket permissions - You must have permissions in a bucket policy or an IAM identity-based policy based on the source and destination bucket types in a CopyObject operation.

    • If the source object that you want to copy is in a directory bucket, you must have the s3express:CreateSession permission in the Action element of a policy to read the object. If no session mode is specified, the session will be created with the maximum allowable privilege, attempting ReadWrite first, then ReadOnly if ReadWrite is not permitted. If you want to explicitly restrict the access to be read-only, you can set the s3express:SessionMode condition key to ReadOnly on the copy source bucket.

    • If the copy destination is a directory bucket, you must have the s3express:CreateSession permission in the Action element of a policy to write the object to the destination. The s3express:SessionMode condition key can't be set to ReadOnly on the copy destination bucket.

    If the object is encrypted with SSE-KMS, you must also have the kms:GenerateDataKey and kms:Decrypt permissions in IAM identity-based policies and AWS KMS key policies for the AWS KMS key.

    For example policies, see Example bucket policies for S3 Express One Zone and AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) identity-based policies for S3 Express One Zone in the Amazon S3 User Guide.

Response and special errors

When the request is an HTTP 1.1 request, the response is chunk encoded. When the request is not an HTTP 1.1 request, the response would not contain the Content-Length. You always need to read the entire response body to check if the copy succeeds.

  • If the copy is successful, you receive a response with information about the copied object.

  • A copy request might return an error when Amazon S3 receives the copy request or while Amazon S3 is copying the files. A 200 OK response can contain either a success or an error.

    • If the error occurs before the copy action starts, you receive a standard Amazon S3 error.

    • If the error occurs during the copy operation, the error response is embedded in the 200 OK response. For example, in a cross-region copy, you may encounter throttling and receive a 200 OK response. For more information, see Resolve the Error 200 response when copying objects to Amazon S3. The 200 OK status code means the copy was accepted, but it doesn't mean the copy is complete. Another example is when you disconnect from Amazon S3 before the copy is complete, Amazon S3 might cancel the copy and you may receive a 200 OK response. You must stay connected to Amazon S3 until the entire response is successfully received and processed.

      If you call this API operation directly, make sure to design your application to parse the content of the response and handle it appropriately. If you use AWS SDKs, SDKs handle this condition. The SDKs detect the embedded error and apply error handling per your configuration settings (including automatically retrying the request as appropriate). If the condition persists, the SDKs throw an exception (or, for the SDKs that don't use exceptions, they return an error).

Charge

The copy request charge is based on the storage class and Region that you specify for the destination object. The request can also result in a data retrieval charge for the source if the source storage class bills for data retrieval. If the copy source is in a different region, the data transfer is billed to the copy source account. For pricing information, see Amazon S3 pricing.

HTTP Host header syntax

  • Directory buckets - The HTTP Host header syntax is Bucket-name.s3express-zone-id.region-code.amazonaws.com.

  • Amazon S3 on Outposts - When you use this action with S3 on Outposts through the REST API, you must direct requests to the S3 on Outposts hostname. The S3 on Outposts hostname takes the form AccessPointName-AccountId.outpostID.s3-outposts.Region.amazonaws.com. The hostname isn't required when you use the AWS CLI or SDKs.

The following operations are related to CopyObject:

Important

You must URL encode any signed header values that contain spaces. For example, if your header value is my file.txt, containing two spaces after my, you must URL encode this value to my%20%20file.txt.

Request Syntax

PUT /Key+ HTTP/1.1
Host: Bucket.s3.amazonaws.com
x-amz-acl: ACL
Cache-Control: CacheControl
x-amz-checksum-algorithm: ChecksumAlgorithm
Content-Disposition: ContentDisposition
Content-Encoding: ContentEncoding
Content-Language: ContentLanguage
Content-Type: ContentType
x-amz-copy-source: CopySource
x-amz-copy-source-if-match: CopySourceIfMatch
x-amz-copy-source-if-modified-since: CopySourceIfModifiedSince
x-amz-copy-source-if-none-match: CopySourceIfNoneMatch
x-amz-copy-source-if-unmodified-since: CopySourceIfUnmodifiedSince
Expires: Expires
x-amz-grant-full-control: GrantFullControl
x-amz-grant-read: GrantRead
x-amz-grant-read-acp: GrantReadACP
x-amz-grant-write-acp: GrantWriteACP
If-Match: IfMatch
If-None-Match: IfNoneMatch
x-amz-metadata-directive: MetadataDirective
x-amz-tagging-directive: TaggingDirective
x-amz-object-annotation-directive: AnnotationDirective
x-amz-server-side-encryption: ServerSideEncryption
x-amz-storage-class: StorageClass
x-amz-website-redirect-location: WebsiteRedirectLocation
x-amz-server-side-encryption-customer-algorithm: SSECustomerAlgorithm
x-amz-server-side-encryption-customer-key: SSECustomerKey
x-amz-server-side-encryption-customer-key-MD5: SSECustomerKeyMD5
x-amz-server-side-encryption-aws-kms-key-id: SSEKMSKeyId
x-amz-server-side-encryption-context: SSEKMSEncryptionContext
x-amz-server-side-encryption-bucket-key-enabled: BucketKeyEnabled
x-amz-copy-source-server-side-encryption-customer-algorithm: CopySourceSSECustomerAlgorithm
x-amz-copy-source-server-side-encryption-customer-key: CopySourceSSECustomerKey
x-amz-copy-source-server-side-encryption-customer-key-MD5: CopySourceSSECustomerKeyMD5
x-amz-request-payer: RequestPayer
x-amz-tagging: Tagging
x-amz-object-lock-mode: ObjectLockMode
x-amz-object-lock-retain-until-date: ObjectLockRetainUntilDate
x-amz-object-lock-legal-hold: ObjectLockLegalHoldStatus
x-amz-expected-bucket-owner: ExpectedBucketOwner
x-amz-source-expected-bucket-owner: ExpectedSourceBucketOwner

URI Request Parameters

The request uses the following URI parameters.

Bucket

The name of the destination bucket.

Directory buckets - When you use this operation with a directory bucket, you must use virtual-hosted-style requests in the format Bucket-name.s3express-zone-id.region-code.amazonaws.com. Path-style requests are not supported. Directory bucket names must be unique in the chosen Zone (Availability Zone or Local Zone). Bucket names must follow the format bucket-base-name--zone-id--x-s3 (for example, amzn-s3-demo-bucket--usw2-az1--x-s3). For information about bucket naming restrictions, see Directory bucket naming rules in the Amazon S3 User Guide.

Note

Copying objects across different AWS Regions isn't supported when the source or destination bucket is in AWS Local Zones. The source and destination buckets must have the same parent AWS Region. Otherwise, you get an HTTP 400 Bad Request error with the error code InvalidRequest.

Access points - When you use this action with an access point for general purpose buckets, you must provide the alias of the access point in place of the bucket name or specify the access point ARN. When you use this action with an access point for directory buckets, you must provide the access point name in place of the bucket name. When using the access point ARN, you must direct requests to the access point hostname. The access point hostname takes the form AccessPointName-AccountId.s3-accesspoint.Region.amazonaws.com. When using this action with an access point through the AWS SDKs, you provide the access point ARN in place of the bucket name. For more information about access point ARNs, see Using access points in the Amazon S3 User Guide.

Note

Object Lambda access points are not supported by directory buckets.

S3 on Outposts - When you use this action with S3 on Outposts, you must use the Outpost bucket access point ARN or the access point alias for the destination bucket. You can only copy objects within the same Outpost bucket. It's not supported to copy objects across different AWS Outposts, between buckets on the same Outposts, or between Outposts buckets and any other bucket types. For more information about S3 on Outposts, see What is S3 on Outposts? in the S3 on Outposts guide. When you use this action with S3 on Outposts through the REST API, you must direct requests to the S3 on Outposts hostname, in the format AccessPointName-AccountId.outpostID.s3-outposts.Region.amazonaws.com. The hostname isn't required when you use the AWS CLI or SDKs.

Required: Yes

Cache-Control

Specifies the caching behavior along the request/reply chain.

Content-Disposition

Specifies presentational information for the object. Indicates whether an object should be displayed in a web browser or downloaded as a file. It allows specifying the desired filename for the downloaded file.

Content-Encoding

Specifies what content encodings have been applied to the object and thus what decoding mechanisms must be applied to obtain the media-type referenced by the Content-Type header field.

Note

For directory buckets, only the aws-chunked value is supported in this header field.

Content-Language

The language the content is in.

Content-Type

A standard MIME type that describes the format of the object data.

Expires

The date and time at which the object is no longer cacheable.

If-Match

Copies the object if the entity tag (ETag) of the destination object matches the specified tag. If the ETag values do not match, the operation returns a 412 Precondition Failed error. If a concurrent operation occurs during the upload S3 returns a 409 ConditionalRequestConflict response. On a 409 failure you should fetch the object's ETag and retry the upload.

Expects the ETag value as a string.

For more information about conditional requests, see RFC 7232.

If-None-Match

Copies the object only if the object key name at the destination does not already exist in the bucket specified. Otherwise, Amazon S3 returns a 412 Precondition Failed error. If a concurrent operation occurs during the upload S3 returns a 409 ConditionalRequestConflict response. On a 409 failure you should retry the upload.

Expects the '*' (asterisk) character.

For more information about conditional requests, see RFC 7232.

Key

The key of the destination object.

Length Constraints: Minimum length of 1.

Required: Yes

x-amz-acl

The canned access control list (ACL) to apply to the object.

When you copy an object, the ACL metadata is not preserved and is set to private by default. Only the owner has full access control. To override the default ACL setting, specify a new ACL when you generate a copy request. For more information, see Using ACLs.

If the destination bucket that you're copying objects to uses the bucket owner enforced setting for S3 Object Ownership, ACLs are disabled and no longer affect permissions. Buckets that use this setting only accept PUT requests that don't specify an ACL or PUT requests that specify bucket owner full control ACLs, such as the bucket-owner-full-control canned ACL or an equivalent form of this ACL expressed in the XML format. For more information, see Controlling ownership of objects and disabling ACLs in the Amazon S3 User Guide.

Note

  • If your destination bucket uses the bucket owner enforced setting for Object Ownership, all objects written to the bucket by any account will be owned by the bucket owner.

  • This functionality is not supported for directory buckets.

  • This functionality is not supported for Amazon S3 on Outposts.

Valid Values: private | public-read | public-read-write | authenticated-read | aws-exec-read | bucket-owner-read | bucket-owner-full-control

x-amz-checksum-algorithm

Indicates the algorithm that you want Amazon S3 to use to create the checksum for the object. For more information, see Checking object integrity in the Amazon S3 User Guide.

When you copy an object, if the source object has a checksum, that checksum value will be copied to the new object by default. If the CopyObject request does not include this x-amz-checksum-algorithm header, the checksum algorithm will be copied from the source object to the destination object (if it's present on the source object). You can optionally specify a different checksum algorithm to use with the x-amz-checksum-algorithm header. Unrecognized or unsupported values will respond with the HTTP status code 400 Bad Request.

Note

For directory buckets, when you use AWS SDKs, CRC32 is the default checksum algorithm that's used for performance.

Valid Values: CRC32 | CRC32C | SHA1 | SHA256 | CRC64NVME | SHA512 | MD5 | XXHASH64 | XXHASH3 | XXHASH128

x-amz-copy-source

Specifies the source object for the copy operation. The source object can be up to 5 GB. If the source object is an object that was uploaded by using a multipart upload, the object copy will be a single part object after the source object is copied to the destination bucket.

You specify the value of the copy source in one of two formats, depending on whether you want to access the source object through an access point:

  • For objects not accessed through an access point, specify the name of the source bucket and the key of the source object, separated by a slash (/). For example, to copy the object reports/january.pdf from the general purpose bucket awsexamplebucket, use awsexamplebucket/reports/january.pdf. The value must be URL-encoded. To copy the object reports/january.pdf from the directory bucket awsexamplebucket--use1-az5--x-s3, use awsexamplebucket--use1-az5--x-s3/reports/january.pdf. The value must be URL-encoded.

  • For objects accessed through access points, specify the Amazon Resource Name (ARN) of the object as accessed through the access point, in the format arn:aws:s3:<Region>:<account-id>:accesspoint/<access-point-name>/object/<key>. For example, to copy the object reports/january.pdf through access point my-access-point owned by account 123456789012 in Region us-west-2, use the URL encoding of arn:aws:s3:us-west-2:123456789012:accesspoint/my-access-point/object/reports/january.pdf. The value must be URL encoded.

    Note

    • Amazon S3 supports copy operations using Access points only when the source and destination buckets are in the same AWS Region.

    • Access points are not supported by directory buckets.

    Alternatively, for objects accessed through Amazon S3 on Outposts, specify the ARN of the object as accessed in the format arn:aws:s3-outposts:<Region>:<account-id>:outpost/<outpost-id>/object/<key>. For example, to copy the object reports/january.pdf through outpost my-outpost owned by account 123456789012 in Region us-west-2, use the URL encoding of arn:aws:s3-outposts:us-west-2:123456789012:outpost/my-outpost/object/reports/january.pdf. The value must be URL-encoded.

If your source bucket versioning is enabled, the x-amz-copy-source header by default identifies the current version of an object to copy. If the current version is a delete marker, Amazon S3 behaves as if the object was deleted. To copy a different version, use the versionId query parameter. Specifically, append ?versionId=<version-id> to the value (for example, awsexamplebucket/reports/january.pdf?versionId=QUpfdndhfd8438MNFDN93jdnJFkdmqnh893). If you don't specify a version ID, Amazon S3 copies the latest version of the source object.

If you enable versioning on the destination bucket, Amazon S3 generates a unique version ID for the copied object. This version ID is different from the version ID of the source object. Amazon S3 returns the version ID of the copied object in the x-amz-version-id response header in the response.

If you do not enable versioning or suspend it on the destination bucket, the version ID that Amazon S3 generates in the x-amz-version-id response header is always null.

Note

Directory buckets - S3 Versioning isn't enabled and supported for directory buckets.

Pattern: \/?.+\/.+

Required: Yes

x-amz-copy-source-if-match

Copies the object if its entity tag (ETag) matches the specified tag.

If both the x-amz-copy-source-if-match and x-amz-copy-source-if-unmodified-since headers are present in the request and evaluate as follows, Amazon S3 returns 200 OK and copies the data:

  • x-amz-copy-source-if-match condition evaluates to true

  • x-amz-copy-source-if-unmodified-since condition evaluates to false

x-amz-copy-source-if-modified-since

Copies the object if it has been modified since the specified time.

If both the x-amz-copy-source-if-none-match and x-amz-copy-source-if-modified-since headers are present in the request and evaluate as follows, Amazon S3 returns the 412 Precondition Failed response code:

  • x-amz-copy-source-if-none-match condition evaluates to false

  • x-amz-copy-source-if-modified-since condition evaluates to true

x-amz-copy-source-if-none-match

Copies the object if its entity tag (ETag) is different than the specified ETag.

If both the x-amz-copy-source-if-none-match and x-amz-copy-source-if-modified-since headers are present in the request and evaluate as follows, Amazon S3 returns the 412 Precondition Failed response code:

  • x-amz-copy-source-if-none-match condition evaluates to false

  • x-amz-copy-source-if-modified-since condition evaluates to true

x-amz-copy-source-if-unmodified-since

Copies the object if it hasn't been modified since the specified time.

If both the x-amz-copy-source-if-match and x-amz-copy-source-if-unmodified-since headers are present in the request and evaluate as follows, Amazon S3 returns 200 OK and copies the data:

  • x-amz-copy-source-if-match condition evaluates to true

  • x-amz-copy-source-if-unmodified-since condition evaluates to false

x-amz-copy-source-server-side-encryption-customer-algorithm

Specifies the algorithm to use when decrypting the source object (for example,