Elastic CLI command reference

The Elastic CLI (elastic) lets you manage Elasticsearch, Kibana, and Elastic Cloud resources from the command line. It supports both self-managed Elastic Stack deployments and Elastic Serverless projects.

Use the CLI to:

Connect to multiple clusters or projects using named contexts
Manage Elastic Cloud Hosted deployments and Serverless projects
Automate operations in CI/CD pipelines and LLM agent workflows

To get started, see Install the Elastic CLI and Configure the Elastic CLI.

Global Options

--[no-]json: output as JSON

Commands

version

Print the elastic CLI version

Namespaces

stack

Interact with Elastic Stack components (Elasticsearch, Kibana, Fleet)

cloud

Manage Elastic Cloud (hosted deployments and serverless projects)

docs

Search, read, and ask questions about Elastic documentation

config

Author and maintain the elastic config file

sanitize

Sanitize values for safe use in Elasticsearch

Environment Variables

ELASTIC_CLI_CONFIG_FILE: Override the config file path (precedence: --config-file > this > home directory discovery)
ELASTIC_NO_BANNER: Set to 1 to suppress the startup logo
ELASTIC_CLOUD_ADMIN_API: Override the Elastic Cloud admin API base URL

Configuration Files

~/.elasticrc.yml: Primary config file (recommended)
~/.elasticrc.yaml: Alternative YAML extension
~/.elasticrc.json: JSON form of the config file
~/.elasticrc: Extensionless form of the config file