Thanks Sascha works like a charm, In case it helps someone else this is a simple version of working code (using this as temporary code to set up an initial user, normally would suggest a cleaner way to get the userId from keycloak but search works fine for now): UserRepresentation user = new UserRepresentation(); user.setUsername("testuser"); user.setFirstName("Test"); user.setLastName("User"); kc.realm("master").users().create(user); kc.realm("master").users().search("testUser", 0, 1).forEach( UserResource userResource = kc.realm("master").users().get(user.getId()); CredentialRepresentation credential = new CredentialRepresentation(); credential.setType(CredentialRepresentation.PASSWORD); credential.setValue("test123"); credential.setTemporary(true); userResource.resetPassword(credential); ) Will