← Back to tools

Azure CLI

Official command-line interface for Microsoft Azure

Homepage Repository
Cloud & Services linuxmacoswindows Python MIT

Description

The Azure CLI is the cross-platform command-line tool for managing Azure resources. It provides commands for virtually every Azure service including VMs, storage, networking, databases, Kubernetes, and serverless functions, with consistent syntax and rich query capabilities.

Install

homebrewbrew install azure-cli
pippip install azure-cli

AI Summary

Official Azure CLI. Manage VMs, storage accounts, AKS clusters, App Services, Azure Functions, and the full breadth of Microsoft Azure services from the terminal.

Capabilities

  • + Create and manage virtual machines, scale sets, and networking
  • + Deploy web apps to Azure App Service
  • + Manage AKS Kubernetes clusters and container instances
  • + Provision and query Azure SQL, Cosmos DB, and other databases
  • + Manage storage accounts, blobs, and file shares
  • + Configure Azure Active Directory and role-based access control
  • + Query output with built-in JMESPath --query support

Use When

  • → Managing any Microsoft Azure resource from the terminal
  • → Deploying applications to Azure App Service, Functions, or AKS
  • → Automating Azure resource provisioning in CI/CD pipelines
  • → Scripting multi-resource deployments with Azure

Avoid When

  • x Managing non-Azure cloud resources (use aws-cli, gcloud, doctl instead)
  • x Need declarative infrastructure management (use Terraform or Bicep)
  • x Building simple static sites without Azure dependency (use Vercel or Netlify)

Usage Patterns

Create a virtual machine

az vm create -g myResourceGroup -n myVM --image Ubuntu2204 --admin-username azureuser --generate-ssh-keys

Creates an Ubuntu VM with auto-generated SSH keys in the specified resource group

Deploy a web app

az webapp up --name my-app --resource-group myRG --runtime 'NODE:18-lts'

Creates and deploys a web app from the current directory

List resources in a group

az resource list -g myResourceGroup --output table

Lists all resources in a resource group in table format

Input / Output

stdin: JSON input for some commands (e.g., --json-template)
stdout: JSON, table, TSV, or YAML formatted Azure API responses
Exit codes:
0 Success
1 Error

Typical Pipelines

az vm list --output json | jq '.[] | {name, powerState: .powerState}'
az group list --query '[].name' -o tsv | fzf | xargs -I{} az resource list -g {} -o table
az monitor activity-log list --offset 1h --query "[?level=='Error']" -o json | jq -r '.[].operationName.value'

Related Tools

aws-cli alternative

aws-cli is the equivalent CLI for Amazon Web Services
gcloud alternative

gcloud is the equivalent CLI for Google Cloud Platform
terraform complementary

Terraform for declarative multi-cloud infrastructure, az for imperative Azure commands
jq complementary

jq processes JSON output from Azure CLI for complex transformations
View AGENTS.md for Azure CLI