Hello, thanks for your question.

TL;DR

No, it is currently not possible to specify the log level (e.g., --log-level debug) using the fastapi run or fastapi dev commands.

Explanation

The fastapi CLI presently hardcodes the logging configuration for the underlying Uvicorn server to INFO (ref code 1 and 2). It does not expose a flag to change this, nor does it respect standard environment variables like UVICORN_LOG_LEVEL because the explicit internal configuration overrides them.

--verbose flag

You might have noticed a --verbose flag in the CLI help. For example: fastapi --verbose run app/main.py.

This does not enable debug logs for your application. It only enables debug logging for the fastapi CLI tool processes (like file discovery, import logic, etc.). It has no effect on the running server or your application logs.

Workaround

The workaround available right now is to use uvicorn directly instead of the fastapi CLI as you have suggested or you can contribute to the fast API CLI source code by making this change, contributions are always welcome :)