ERROR: The subscription of 'XXXXX' doesn't exist in cloud 'AzureCloud'.

[rajesh0281]

Describe the bug

We have a pipeline which use the Azure CLI and we are getting this error

2024-02-07T18:30:40.8154175Z [command]C:\Windows\system32\cmd.exe /D /S /C ""C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Azure\CLI2\wbin\az.cmd" account set --subscription XXXXXX"
2024-02-07T18:30:41.3868367Z ERROR: The subscription of 'XXXXX' doesn't exist in cloud 'AzureCloud'.
2024-02-07T18:30:41.3903663Z ##[error]Error Code: [1]
2024-02-07T18:30:41.3924083Z ##[error]Error: Error in setting up subscription
2024-02-07T18:30:41.4027569Z ##[error]Script failed with error: ERROR: The subscription of 'XXXX' doesn't exist in cloud 'AzureCloud'

Related command

get-access-token --resource="XXXX"

Errors

The subscription of 'XXXXX' doesn't exist in cloud 'AzureCloud'.

Issue script & Debug output

The subscription of 'XXXXX' doesn't exist in cloud 'AzureCloud'.

Expected behavior

We would have got the token without any error.

Environment Summary

2.230.0

Additional context

we are using 2.230.0 azure CLI version.

[azure-client-tools-bot-prd]

Hi @rajesh0281
Find similar issue #26561.

Issue title	ERROR: The subscription of 'XXXX' doesn't exist in cloud 'AzureCloud'.
Create time	2023-05-30
Comment number	8

---

Please confirm if this resolves your issue.

[yonzhan]

Thank you for opening this issue, we will look into it.

[kimjamia]

This happens if the service principal doesn't have any RBAC permissions to the subscription. Even if you don't use the SP to manage any resources in the subscription, you need to grant some permission (e.g. Reader) to at least one resource. After that, account set --subscription will start to work.

[websolut]

We are facing the same issue. Maybe once in 20-30 deployments the pwsh script doing az account set will fail with this error. Very annoying considering that it is an external datasource script we use in terraform. Nothing to do with RBAC as the agent's SPN has owner's permission.

[rafa-pizzi]

Hi, I've been facing the same issue...
I noticed it started to happen again from 15th September 2025, while most of the pipelines were running fine up until Friday late afternoon AEST.
I'm facing the issues in several SPs, in several pipelines. it can't be related to RBAC as the different SPs have different access, some of them with Subscription owner.
It's been very intermittent. Everything is up-to-date:

azure-cli                         2.77.0
core                              2.77.0
telemetry                          1.1.0
Extensions:
azure-devops                       1.0.2
Dependencies:
msal                            1.34.0b1
azure-mgmt-resource               23.3.0

I noticed when it fails, it gives this on the log screen:

[
  {
    "cloudName": "AzureCloud",
    "id": "12345678-aaaa-aaaa-aaaa-123456789012",
    "isDefault": true,
    "name": "N/A(tenant level account)",
    "state": "Enabled",
    "tenantId": "12345678-aaaa-aaaa-aaaa-123456789012",
    "user": {
      "name": "***",
      "type": "servicePrincipal"
    }
  }
]

and when it works, just rerunning the failed jobs (so no changes to rbac or any change to permissions, sp config, devops config or whatsoever)

[
  {
    "cloudName": "AzureCloud",
    "homeTenantId": "12345678-aaaa-aaaa-aaaa-123456789012",
    "id": "mysubid-ssss-subs-subs-scription123",
    "isDefault": true,
    "managedByTenants": [
      {
        "tenantId": "09876543-bbbb-bbbb-bbbb-badabadababa"
      }
    ],
    "name": "subscriptionName",
    "state": "Enabled",
    "tenantId": "12345678-aaaa-aaaa-aaaa-123456789012",
    "user": {
      "name": "***",
      "type": "servicePrincipal"
    }
  }
]

(the extra verbose probably because of lighthouse, but that's beyond the point)
I also have a few managed function apps with managed identities failing intermittently, so I guess it its a bit beyond azcli@2 or cli 2.77.0

[scott-the-programmer]

Just to second what @rafa-pizzi said, I've also started experiencing this today out of nowhere.

In my case, there seems to be some state that gets corrupted from previous logins i.e. logging in with serviceConnection1, and then trying to login with serviceConnection2 at a later stage causes

The subscription of 'XXXXX' doesn't exist in cloud 'AzureCloud'