Apify CLI

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

Agent skill

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

1. Install the CLI (macOS / Linux):

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

   For Windows and other installation options, see Installation.

2. Log in with your Apify API token:

   apify login
   

3. 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

• Apify CLI documentation
• Command reference
• Actor development guide
• Apify platform 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