Apify CLI

July 1, 2026 · View on GitHub

Apify CLI is the command-line tool for creating, developing, and deploying Apify Actors, and for managing the Apify cloud platform from your terminal.

Features

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 --skill

If 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:

Claude Code

mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills/apify-cli
apify help --skill > ~/.claude/skills/apify-cli/SKILL.md

Codex and other agents

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.

Quick start

Install the CLI (macOS / Linux):
```
curl -fsSL https://apify.com/install-cli.sh | bash
```
For 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-world Actor and prints its results. To build your own Actor instead, run apify create and follow the interactive wizard.

Installation

macOS / Linux (bundle, recommended)

curl -fsSL https://apify.com/install-cli.sh | bash

macOS / Linux (Homebrew)

brew install apify-cli

Windows

irm https://apify.com/install-cli.ps1 | iex

npm (cross-platform)

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

Commands

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).

Documentation

Telemetry

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.

Contributing

Contributions are welcome. See CONTRIBUTING.md for local setup, code style, test categories, and PR guidelines.

Feedback & support

Report bugs or request features via GitHub Issues
Browse the Apify Help Center
Contact Apify support
Join the community on Discord

License

Apache-2.0