The Render CLI

Use the Render CLI to manage your Render services and datastores directly from your terminal:

Among many other capabilities, the CLI supports:

• Triggering service deploys, restarts, and one-off jobs
• Opening a psql session to your database
• Viewing and filtering live service logs

The CLI also supports non-interactive use in scripts and CI/CD.

Setup

brew uninstall render
brew untap render-oss/render

1. Install

brew update
brew install render

After installation completes, open a new terminal tab and run render with no arguments to confirm.

2. Log in

The Render CLI uses a CLI token to authenticate with the Render platform. Generate a token with the following steps:

1. Run the following command:

   render login

   Your browser opens a confirmation page in the Render Dashboard.

2. Click Generate token.

   The CLI saves the generated token to its local configuration file.

3. When you see the success message in your browser, close the tab and return to your terminal.

4. The CLI prompts you to set your active workspace.

   You can switch workspaces at any time with render workspace set.

You’re ready to go!

Common commands

Non-interactive mode

By default, the Render CLI uses interactive, menu-based navigation. This default is great for manual use, but not for scripting or automation.

Configure the CLI for non-interactive use in CI/CD and other automated environments with the following steps:

1. Authenticate via API key

The Render CLI can authenticate using an API key instead of render login. Unlike CLI tokens, API keys do not periodically expire. For security, use this authentication method only for automated environments.

1. Generate an API key with these steps.

2. In your automation’s environment, set the RENDER_API_KEY environment variable to your API key:

   export RENDER_API_KEY=rnd_RUExip…

2. Set non-interactive command options

Set the following options for all commands you run in non-interactive mode:

For example, to list the active workspace’s services in JSON format:

render services --output json --confirm

Example: GitHub Actions

This example action provides similar functionality to Render’s automatic Git deploys. You could disable auto-deploys and customize this action to trigger deploys with different conditions.

To use this action, first set the following secrets in your repository:

name: Render CLI Deploy
run-name: Deploying via Render CLI
# Run this workflow when code is pushed to the main branch.
on:
  push:
    branches:
      - main
jobs:
  Deploy-Render:
      runs-on: ubuntu-latest
      steps:
        # Downloads the Render CLI binary and adds it to the PATH.
        # To prevent breaking changes in CI/CD, we pin to a
        # specific CLI version (in this case 1.1.0).
        - name: Install Render CLI
          run: |
            curl -L https://github.com/render-oss/cli/releases/download/v1.1.0/cli_1.1.0_linux_amd64.zip -o render.zip
            unzip render.zip
            sudo mv cli_v1.1.0 /usr/local/bin/render
        - name: Trigger deploy with Render CLI
          env:
            # The CLI can authenticate via a Render API key without logging in.
            RENDER_API_KEY: ${{ secrets.RENDER_API_KEY }}
            CI: true
          run: |
            render deploys create ${{ secrets.RENDER_SERVICE_ID }} --output json --confirm

Local config

By default, the Render CLI stores its local configuration at the following path:

$HOME/.render/cli.yaml

You can change this file path by setting the RENDER_CLI_CONFIG_PATH environment variable.

Managing CLI tokens

For security, CLI tokens periodically expire. If you don’t use the Render CLI for a while, you might need to re-authenticate with render login.

View a list of your active CLI tokens from your Account Settings page in the Render Dashboard. You can manually revoke a CLI token that you no longer need or that might be compromised. Expired and revoked tokens tokens do not appear in the list.