What is the Amazon Command Line Interface? - Amazon Command Line Interface
About Amazon CLI version 2Maintenance and support for SDK major versionsAbout Amazon Web Services
Services or capabilities described in Amazon Web Services documentation might vary by Region. To see the differences applicable to the China Regions, see Getting Started with Amazon Web Services in China (PDF).

What is the Amazon Command Line Interface?

The Amazon Command Line Interface (Amazon CLI) is an open source tool that enables you to interact with Amazon services using commands in your command-line shell. With minimal configuration, the Amazon CLI enables you to start running commands that implement functionality equivalent to that provided by the browser-based Amazon Web Services Management Console from the command prompt in your terminal program:

  • Linux shells – Use common shell programs such as bash, zsh, and tcsh to run commands in Linux or macOS.

  • Windows command line – On Windows, run commands at the Windows command prompt or in PowerShell.

  • Remotely – Run commands on Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instances through a remote terminal program such as PuTTY or SSH, or with Amazon Systems Manager.

All IaaS (infrastructure as a service) Amazon administration, management, and access functions in the Amazon Web Services Management Console are available in the Amazon API and Amazon CLI. New Amazon IaaS features and services provide full Amazon Web Services Management Console functionality through the API and CLI at launch or within 180 days of launch.

The Amazon CLI provides direct access to the public APIs of Amazon services. You can explore a service's capabilities with the Amazon CLI, and develop shell scripts to manage your resources. In addition to the low-level, API-equivalent commands, several Amazon services provide customizations for the Amazon CLI. Customizations can include higher-level commands that simplify using a service with a complex API.

About Amazon CLI version 2

The Amazon CLI version 2 is the most recent major version of the Amazon CLI and supports all of the latest features. Some features introduced in version 2 are not backported to version 1 and you must upgrade to access those features. There are some "breaking" changes from version 1 that might require you to change your scripts. For a list of breaking changes in version 2, see Migrate from Amazon CLI version 1 to version 2.

The Amazon CLI version 2 is available to install only as a bundled installer. While you might find it in package managers, these are unsupported and unofficial packages that are not produced or managed by Amazon. We recommend that you install the Amazon CLI from only the official Amazon distribution points, as documented in this guide.

To install the Amazon CLI version 2, see Install or update to the latest version of the Amazon CLI.

To check the currently installed version, use the following command:

$ aws --version
aws-cli/2.15.30 Python/3.11.6 Linux/5.10.205-195.807.amzn2.x86_64 botocore/1.18.6

For version history, see the Amazon CLI version 2 Changelog on GitHub.

Maintenance and support for SDK major versions

For information about maintenance and support for SDK major versions and their underlying dependencies, see the following in the Amazon SDKs and Tools Reference Guide:

About Amazon Web Services

Amazon Web Services (Amazon) is a collection of digital infrastructure services that developers can leverage when developing their applications. The services include computing, storage, database, and application synchronization (messaging and queuing). Amazon uses a pay-as-you-go service model. You are charged only for the services that you—or your applications—use. Also, to make Amazon more approachable as a platform for prototyping and experimentation, Amazon offers a free usage tier. On this tier, services are free below a certain level of usage. For more information about Amazon costs and the Free Tier, see Amazon Free Tier. To obtain an Amazon account, open the Amazon home page and then choose Create a Free Account.