hcloud is a command-line interface for interacting with Hetzner Cloud.

You can download pre-built binaries for Linux, FreeBSD, macOS, and Windows on the releases page.

On macOS and Linux, you can install hcloud via Homebrew:

brew install hcloud

On Windows, you can install hcloud via Scoop

scoop install hcloud

There are unofficial packages maintained by third-party users. Please note that these packages aren’t supported nor maintained by Hetzner Cloud and may not always be up-to-date. Downloading the binary or building from source is still the recommended install method.

If you have Go installed, you can build and install the latest version of hcloud with:

go install github.com/hetznercloud/cli/cmd/hcloud@latest

Binaries built in this way do not have the correct version embedded. Use our prebuilt binaries or check out .goreleaser.yml to learn how to embed it yourself.

1. Visit the Hetzner Cloud Console at console.hetzner.cloud, select your project, and create a new API token.

2. Configure the hcloud program to use your token:

   hcloud context create my-project
   

3. You’re ready to use the program. For example, to get a list of available server types, run:

   hcloud server-type list
   

See hcloud help for a list of commands.

hcloud provides completions for various shells.

To load completions into the current shell execute:

source <(hcloud completion bash)

In order to make the completions permanent, append the line above to your .bashrc.

If shell completions are not already enabled for your environment need to enable them. Add the following line to your ~/.zshrc file:

autoload -Uz compinit; compinit

To load completions for each session execute the following commands:

mkdir -p ~/.config/hcloud/completion/zsh
hcloud completion zsh > ~/.config/hcloud/completion/zsh/_hcloud

Finally, add the following line to your ~/.zshrc file, before you call the compinit function:

fpath+=(~/.config/hcloud/completion/zsh)

In the end your ~/.zshrc file should contain the following two lines in the order given here.

fpath+=(~/.config/hcloud/completion/zsh)
#  ... anything else that needs to be done before compinit
autoload -Uz compinit; compinit
# ...

You will need to start a new shell for this setup to take effect.

To load completions into the current shell execute:

hcloud completion fish | source

In order to make the completions permanent execute once:

 hcloud completion fish > ~/.config/fish/completions/hcloud.fish

To load completions into the current shell execute:

PS> hcloud completion powershell | Out-String | Invoke-Expression

To load completions for every new session, run and source this file from your PowerShell profile.

PS> hcloud completion powershell > hcloud.ps1

You can control output via the -o option:

• For list commands, you can specify -o noheader to omit the table header.

• For list commands, you can specify -o columns=id,name to only show certain columns in the table.

• For describe commands, you can specify -o json to get a JSON representation of the resource. The schema is identical to those in the Hetzner Cloud API which are documented at docs.hetzner.cloud.

• For create commands, you can specify -o json to get a JSON representation of the API response. API responses are documented at docs.hetzner.cloud. In contrast to describe commands, create commands can return extra information, for example the initial root password of a server.

• For describe commands, you can specify -o format={{.ID}} to format output according to the given Go template. The template’s input is the resource’s corresponding struct in the hcloud-go library.

The hcloud CLI tool can be configured using following methods:

1. Configuration file
2. Environment variables
3. Command line flags

A higher number means a higher priority. For example, a command line flag will always override an environment variable.

The configuration file is located at ~/.config/hcloud/cli.toml by default (On Windows: %APPDATA%\hcloud\cli.toml). You can change the location by setting the HCLOUD_CONFIG environment variable or the --config flag. The configuration file stores global preferences, the currently active context, all contexts and context-specific preferences. Contexts always store a token and can optionally have additional preferences which take precedence over the globally set preferences.

However, a config file is not required. If no config file is found, the CLI will use the default configuration. Overriding options using environment variables allows the hcloud CLI to function in a stateless way. For example, setting HCLOUD_TOKEN is already enough in many cases.

You can use the hcloud config command to manage your configuration, for example to get, list, set and unset configuration options and preferences. You can view a list of all available options and preferences by running hcloud config --help.

$ hcloud server list
ID       NAME                    STATUS    IPV4
210216   test1                   running   78.46.122.12
210729   ubuntu-8gb-nbg1-dc3-1   running   94.130.177.158

$ hcloud server create --name test --image debian-9 --type cx22 --ssh-key demo
   7s [====================================================================] 100%
Server 325211 created

MIT license