How to prevent anonymous users from reading couchdb?

Suppose you have supervisor mode disabled. Try setting two valid user fields like this:

[couch_httpd_auth]
require_valid_user = true

[chttpd]
require_valid_user = true

According to the documentation , one is for the cluster port and the other is for the node local port.

Edit: I forgot about membership.

You need to set each database security object . and put some members in membersand adminsfields . You can do this through the Fauxton GUI by clicking the "lock" icon next to each database. Or it can be done by PUT /db/_securityprocessing proper json . From the documentation (emphasis mine).

If any member names or roles are defined for the database, only authenticated users with matching names or roles are allowed to read documents from the database .