from django.contrib.auth import get_user_model from django.contrib.auth.backends import ModelBackend class EmailBackend(ModelBackend): def authenticate(self, request, username=None, password=None, **kwargs): if not username: return None UserModel = get_user_model() try: user = UserModel._default_manager.get(email__iexact=username) except UserModel.DoesNotExist: UserModel().set_password(password) # https://code.djangoproject.com/ticket/20760 else: if user.check_password(password) and self.user_can_authenticate(user): return user