The AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI) is a unified tool to manage your AWS services. With just one tool to download and configure, you can control multiple AWS services from the command line and automate them through scripts.

The AWS CLI v2 offers several new features including improved installers, new configuration options such as AWS IAM Identity Center (successor to AWS SSO), and various interactive features. 

 

Windows
Download and run the 64-bit Windows installer.

MacOS
Download and run the MacOS PKG installer.

Linux
Download, unzip, and then run the Linux installer

Amazon Linux
The AWS CLI comes pre-installed on Amazon Linux AMI.

Release Notes
Check out the Release Notes for more information on the latest version.


aws-shell is a command-line shell program that provides convenience and productivity features to help both new and advanced users of the AWS Command Line Interface. Key features include the following.

  • Fuzzy auto-completion for
    • Commands (e.g. ec2, describe-instances, sqs, create-queue)
    • Options (e.g. --instance-ids, --queue-url)
    • Resource identifiers (e.g. Amazon EC2 instance IDs, Amazon SQS queue URLs, Amazon SNS topic names)
  • Dynamic in-line documentation
    • Documentation for commands and options are displayed as you type
  • Execution of OS shell commands
    • Use common OS commands such as cat, ls, and cp and pipe inputs and outputs without leaving the shell
  • Export executed commands to a text editor

To find out more, check out the related blog post on the AWS Command Line Interface blog.


The AWS Command Line Interface User Guide walks you through installing and configuring the tool. After that, you can begin making calls to your AWS services from the command line.

$ aws ec2 describe-instances


$ aws ec2 start-instances --instance-ids i-1348636c


$ aws sns publish --topic-arn arn:aws:sns:us-east-1:546419318123:OperationsError --message "Script Failure"


$ aws sqs receive-message --queue-url https://queue.amazonaws.com/546419318123/Test

You can get help on the command line to see the supported services,

$ aws help

the operations for a service,

$ aws autoscaling help

and the parameters for a service operation.

$ aws autoscaling create-auto-scaling-group help


New file commands make it easy to manage your Amazon S3 objects. Using familiar syntax, you can view the contents of your S3 buckets in a directory-based listing.

$ aws s3 ls s3://mybucket

        LastWriteTime            Length Name

        ------------             ------ ----

                                PRE myfolder/

2013-09-03 10:00:00           1234 myfile.txt

You can perform recursive uploads and downloads of multiple files in a single folder-level command. The AWS CLI will run these transfers in parallel for increased performance.

$ aws s3 cp myfolder s3://mybucket/myfolder --recursive

upload: myfolder/file1.txt to s3://mybucket/myfolder/file1.txt

upload: myfolder/subfolder/file1.txt to s3://mybucket/myfolder/subfolder/file1.txt

A sync command makes it easy to synchronize the contents of a local folder with a copy in an S3 bucket.

$ aws s3 sync myfolder s3://mybucket/myfolder --exclude *.tmp

upload: myfolder/newfile.txt to s3://mybucket/myfolder/newfile.txt


See the AWS CLI command reference for the full list of supported services.


Connect with other developers in the AWS CLI Community Forum »

Find examples and more in the User Guide »

Learn the details of the latest AWS CLI tools in the Release Notes »

Dig through the source code in the GitHub Repository »