Announcing the NetBox 4.5 Beta

We’re excited to announce the beta release of NetBox 4.5! In NetBox 4.5, we’ve introduced significant new features and improvements – with a focus on real-world usability and feedback from our community. Here’s an overview of what’s coming in NetBox 4.5, how these changes benefit users, and how you can get involved to provide feedback.

What’s included in NetBox 4.5?

Enhanced Cable Modeling with Cable Profiles and Many-to-Many Port Mappings

One of the headline features in 4.5 is a major improvement to how NetBox models complex cabling scenarios. Cable Profiles have been introduced to better represent multi-termination cables such as breakout cables and multi-strand fiber assemblies. A cable profile defines how individual connectors or lanes on one side of a cable map to those on the other side. For example, a profile for a 4×10 GE breakout cable can explicitly describe how four 10 GE lanes map to a single 40 GE connector, rather than treating the cable as a simple point-to-point abstraction. This enables NetBox to trace individual paths between interfaces at either end of the cable.

Building on this, NetBox 4.5 also introduces many-to-many mappings for pass-through ports. This is an important addition for modeling real-world infrastructure such as patch panels, optical distribution frames (ODFs), and modular cabling systems, where a single front-facing port may connect to multiple rear ports—or vice versa. Previously, these scenarios required awkward workarounds or oversimplified models. With many-to-many mappings, NetBox can now accurately represent how signals traverse passive infrastructure without losing fidelity.

Together, these enhancements allow NetBox to precisely trace end-to-end connectivity across cables, pass-through ports, and intermediate infrastructure—even when there are multiple logical paths involved. In practical terms, this means you can confidently document and trace things like MPO fiber harnesses, cassette-based patching systems, and QSFP breakout cabling without guesswork or manual diagrams. For operators managing dense data center or telco environments, this translates directly into better planning, faster troubleshooting, and greater trust in the source-of-truth.

User & Group Ownership of Objects

Another highly requested enhancement is the ability to assign owners to objects in NetBox. In 4.5, most core models can now have an Owner assigned – which can be one or more users and/or groups – thanks to a new Owner model and foreign key field on objects. This feature was developed because many users were seeking to indicate operational responsibility for devices, circuits, etc., and leaning on tenants or tags for this purpose instead. Now, NetBox provides a native mechanism to convey administrative ownership of an object. 

Revamped API Token System for Security & Flexibility

NetBox 4.5 introduces a reworked API token system that improves security and gives administrators more control. API tokens in NetBox now come in a new format and with additional management features:

• New Token Format (Version 2 Tokens): NetBox now supports an alternative token format consisting of a public ID and a secret part separated by a dot (e.g. <id>.<token>). When you create a new token, you’ll only see the secret once (at creation time), as NetBox now stores only a hashed digest of the token rather than the plaintext. This approach – using an HMAC-SHA256 hash with a secret pepper – aligns with security best practices and means no more plaintext tokens stored in the database. Don’t worry, though – your existing tokens (now termed “v1” tokens) will continue to work for now, as the new system is fully backward-compatible. NetBox will accept the old Authorization: Token <token> header for legacy tokens and the new Authorization: Bearer <id>.<token> for the new tokens. In a future release, support for old tokens will be phased out.

• Enable/Disable Tokens: We’ve added a simple way to temporarily disable API tokens without deleting them. Each token now has an “enabled” flag that you can toggle via the UI or API. Previously, if you wanted to revoke a token’s access, you had to delete it or fudge its expiration date or IP restrictions as a workaround, which was not ideal. Now you can simply disable a token with one click – making it immediately ineffective – and re-enable it later if needed. This gives administrators much easier control over API access in scenarios like key rotation, suspected leaks, or just temporarily disabling access for a user.

• Additional Token Improvements: We’ve tightened a few behaviors around tokens for safety. For instance, it is no longer possible to change the owner of an existing token (to prevent any potential abuse of token ownership). The token detail page in the UI now also shows example usage for both v1 and v2 tokens, so users can quickly see the correct Authorization header format to use for their token version. NetBox users integrating with the API should find it easier to handle tokens in automated workflows, and administrators can enforce tighter control and compliance.

UI Filter Lookups

Each filter on an object list within the user interface now includes a handy dropdown of its available lookup modifiers. For example, an integer filter will include options for “greater than” and “less than” in addition to the default exact match; text filters include options for “starts with,” “contains,” and so on. These modifiers make it much easier for users to employ specific lookup logic to form powerful query filters.

Other Notable Enhancements and Changes

NetBox 4.5 is packed with many other improvements. Here are some highlights:

• Platform Inheritance for Config Contexts: If you utilize config contexts (JSON data applied to devices/VMs based on attributes), you’ll benefit from a subtle but useful change: Config contexts assigned to a parent Platform will now also apply to devices/VMs of that platform’s child variants. In other words, platform hierarchies are respected for config context assignment. For example, if you have a base platform “SROS” with variants “SROS-21” and “SROS-24” as child platforms, a config context attached to SROS will automatically apply to devices running SROS-21/24 as well. This removes the need to duplicate identical context data on each child platform, making configuration data management less error-prone.

• Virtual Machine Start-at-Boot Flag: We’ve added a new boolean field to Virtual Machine records to indicate “start at boot” (whether the VM is configured to auto-start with the host). While NetBox doesn’t control VM power state, this field helps track that setting for documentation purposes. It can be useful for tracking which VMs are supposed to come online automatically after a host reboot, providing additional context for virtualization management.

• Device Type Usage Filter: To assist with capacity management, you can now filter Device Types by whether they have any instantiated Devices. A new “Has Instances” boolean filter lets you quickly find unused device types (i.e. those with no devices deployed). This is helpful for cleanup (identifying stale device type definitions) or auditing how widely each hardware model is used in your environment.

• Power Outlet Template Colors: In device Power Outlet Templates, you can now specify a color for outlets (just as you can for cables). This was added to help users visually distinguish power feeds – for example, you might mark A-feed outlets red and B-feed outlets blue, and that color will carry through to the UI icons. It’s a small quality-of-life addition that can make diagrams and lists more clear when managing dual-corded devices.

• GraphQL Filter Enhancements: For those using the GraphQL API, we’ve enabled lookups such as `in_list` for ID and enum fields. This makes it possible to filter these fields using multiple values (for example, fetching devices by a set of IDs or interfaces by a list of names in a single query). This should simplify client code and reduce the number of queries needed in some automation use cases.

• Platform and Python Updates: NetBox 4.5 drops support for Python 3.10 and 3.11 (both of which are no longer supported upstream) and officially adds support for Python 3.13 and 3.14. If you are deploying the beta, make sure your Python environment is updated accordingly. We’ve also removed some deprecated or redundant functionality as part of cleanup – for example, an old legacy API endpoint for object types has been removed, and some obsolete script utility methods were dropped. These changes streamline the codebase and pave the way for future enhancements, but they are worth keeping in mind during testing in case they affect any custom scripts or integrations you have.

Of course, this is just a sampling of what’s included. NetBox 4.5 incorporates dozens of smaller fixes and enhancements in the UI, REST API, GraphQL, and beyond – all aimed at making the platform more robust and enjoyable to use. We encourage you to check out the GitHub milestone for the full list of changes.

Get Involved

As with our previous releases, the beta period is your chance to shape NetBox 4.5 before it reaches general availability. We’d love for you to try out the 4.5 beta and let us know how it goes. Your feedback is invaluable in catching issues, refining new features, and ensuring the release works well for all users.

To get started with the 4.5 beta, head over to the 4.5.0-beta release notes where you can find a per issue breakdown of what’s included. You can also test it out using the Docker image with NetBox Docker, or try out the public beta demo instance.

If you encounter any bugs or odd behavior, please open an issue on GitHub. For general feedback or discussions, please start a discussion on GitHub. You can also chat with other NetBox users in the #netbox channel in the NetDev Slack.

Looking Ahead

NetBox v4.5.0 final release is planned for early January 2026. That gives a short window to test and fix any critical issues. By testing the beta and reporting back, you’ll help ensure a smooth, stable GA release for everyone.

Happy testing, and as always, thank you for being a part of the NetBox community. We can’t wait to hear your thoughts on NetBox 4.5 beta.