X-Frame-Options

The X-Frame-Options HTTP response header can be used to indicate whether a browser should be allowed to render a page in a <frame>, <iframe>, <embed> or <object>. Sites can use this to avoid click-jacking attacks, by ensuring that their content is not embedded into other sites.

The added security is provided only if the user accessing the document is using a browser that supports X-Frame-Options.

Warning: The Content-Security-Policy HTTP header has a frame-ancestors directive which obsoletes this header for supporting browsers.

Header type Response header
Forbidden header name no

Syntax

There are two possible directives for X-Frame-Options:

http
X-Frame-Options: DENY
X-Frame-Options: SAMEORIGIN

Directives

If you specify DENY, not only will the browser attempt to load the page in a frame fail when loaded from other sites, attempts to do so will fail when loaded from the same site. On the other hand, if you specify SAMEORIGIN, you can still use the page in a frame as long as the site including it in a frame is the same as the one serving the page.

DENY

The page cannot be displayed in a frame, regardless of the site attempting to do so.

SAMEORIGIN

The page can only be displayed if all ancestor frames are same origin to the page itself.

ALLOW-FROM origin

This is an obsolete directive. Modern browsers that encounter response headers with this directive will ignore the header completely. The Content-Security-Policy HTTP header has a frame-ancestors directive which you should use instead.

Examples

Warning: Setting X-Frame-Options inside the <meta> element (e.g., <meta http-equiv="X-Frame-Options" content="deny">) has no effect and should not be used! X-Frame-Options is only enforced via HTTP headers, as shown in the examples below.

Configuring Apache

To configure Apache to send the X-Frame-Options header for all pages, add this to your site's configuration:

apacheconf
Header always set X-Frame-Options "SAMEORIGIN"

To configure Apache to set X-Frame-Options to DENY, add this to your site's configuration:

apacheconf
Header set X-Frame-Options "DENY"

Configuring Nginx

To configure Nginx to send the X-Frame-Options header, add this either to your http, server or location configuration:

nginx
add_header X-Frame-Options SAMEORIGIN always;

You can set the X-Frame-Options header to DENY using:

nginx
add_header X-Frame-Options DENY always;

Configuring IIS

To configure IIS to send the X-Frame-Options header, add this to your site's Web.config file:

xml
<system.webServer>
  …
  <httpProtocol>
    <customHeaders>
      <add name="X-Frame-Options" value="SAMEORIGIN" />
    </customHeaders>
  </httpProtocol>
  …
</system.webServer>

For more information, see the Microsoft support article on setting this configuration using the IIS Manager user interface.

Configuring HAProxy

To configure HAProxy to send the X-Frame-Options header, add this to your front-end, listen, or backend configuration:

rspadd X-Frame-Options:\ SAMEORIGIN

Alternatively, in newer versions:

http-response set-header X-Frame-Options SAMEORIGIN

Configuring Express

You can use Helmet to configure an Express app to set the legacy X-Frame-Options header on old browsers.

Warning: It's recommended to use the Content-Security-Policy HTTP header with the frame-ancestors directive instead.

To use Helmet to set X-Frame-Options, add the following to your server configuration to set the SAMEORIGIN directive:

js
const helmet = require("helmet");
const app = express();
app.use(
  helmet({
    xFrameOptions: { action: "sameorigin" },
  }),
);

Specifications

Specification
HTML Standard
# the-x-frame-options-header

Browser compatibility

BCD tables only load in the browser

See also