Apify CLI is the command-line tool for creating, developing, and deploying Apify Actors, and for managing the Apify cloud platform from your terminal.
- Create, develop, and deploy Apify Actors from your terminal
- Run Actors locally for development and testing, or in the Apify cloud
- Manage Actors, datasets, key-value stores, and request queues
- Manage secret environment variables used by your Actors
- Works with any programming language — Actors run as Docker containers on the platform
This repo ships an agent skill that teaches AI coding agents (Claude Code, Cursor, etc.) how to work with the Apify CLI reliably. You can print the skill straight from the CLI — it always matches your installed version:
apify help --skillIf you'd rather have the skill installed persistently, apify help --skill prints a valid SKILL.md that you can redirect into your agent's skills directory. The location depends on the agent:
mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills/apify-cli apify help --skill > ~/.claude/skills/apify-cli/SKILL.md
Codex and most other agents follow the Agent Skills open standard, which loads skills from .agents/skills (per repo) or ~/.agents/skills (per user):
mkdir -p ~/.agents/skills/apify-cli apify help --skill > ~/.agents/skills/apify-cli/SKILL.md
That copy is a snapshot; re-run it after upgrading the Apify CLI to refresh it.
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Install the CLI (macOS / Linux):
curl -fsSL https://apify.com/install-cli.sh | bashFor Windows and other installation options, see Installation.
-
Log in with your Apify API token:
apify login
-
Run an Actor on the Apify cloud:
apify call apify/hello-world --output-dataset
This runs the public
apify/hello-worldActor and prints its results. To build your own Actor instead, runapify createand follow the interactive wizard.
curl -fsSL https://apify.com/install-cli.sh | bashbrew install apify-cli
irm https://apify.com/install-cli.ps1 | iex
Requires Node.js 22 or higher:
npm install -g apify-cli
You can also run the CLI without a global install via npx apify-cli <command>.
Verify the installation:
apify --version
The table below lists the most common commands. For the full reference, see the command reference.
| Command | Description |
|---|---|
apify create |
Create a new Actor project from a template |
apify init |
Initialize an existing project as an Actor |
apify run |
Run the Actor locally |
apify login |
Authenticate with the Apify platform |
apify logout |
Log out of the Apify platform |
apify push |
Deploy the Actor to the Apify cloud |
apify pull |
Pull an Actor from the cloud to your local machine |
apify call |
Run the Actor on the Apify cloud |
apify builds |
Manage Actor builds (create, info, ls, log, rm) |
apify secrets |
Manage secret environment variables |
apify help |
Show help for any command |
Actor configuration lives in .actor/actor.json. See the Actor configuration docs for the full schema (name, version, build tag, environment variables, Dockerfile, input schema, storages).
Apify CLI collects anonymous usage data to help us improve the tool and the Apify platform. See Telemetry for details on what is collected.
To opt out, either run:
apify telemetry disable
or set the APIFY_CLI_DISABLE_TELEMETRY=1 environment variable.
Contributions are welcome. See CONTRIBUTING.md for local setup, code style, test categories, and PR guidelines.
- Report bugs or request features via GitHub Issues
- Browse the Apify Help Center
- Contact Apify support
- Join the community on Discord