One of these combinations should work for setting the account info to download a kaggle dataset. Placing the json file in azure isn't working so was trying this import kaggle api=kaggle.KaggleApi() api.CONFIG_NAME_USER='abc' api.CONFIG_NAME_KEY='xyz' api.read_config_environment({"username":"abc","key":"xyz"}) api.authenticate() api.competition_download_files('dataset_name') EDIT: This is source and I'be tried setting all of these variables manually config_data = self.read_config_environment(config_data) # Step 2: if credentials were not in env read in configuration file if self.CONFIG_NAME_USER not in config_data \ or self.CONFIG_NAME_KEY not in config_data: if os.path.exists(self.config): config_data = self.read_config_file(config_data) else: raise IOError('Could not find {}. Make sure it\'s located in' ' {}. Or use the environment method.'.format( self.config_file, self.config_dir)) Continue reading...