DigitalOcean CLI

Official command-line interface for DigitalOcean

Cloud & Services linuxmacoswindows Go Apache-2.0

Description

doctl is the official DigitalOcean command-line client. It provides access to DigitalOcean's API to manage Droplets, Kubernetes clusters, databases, spaces, load balancers, domains, and other infrastructure resources directly from the terminal.

Install

homebrewbrew install doctl

snapsudo snap install doctl

AI Summary

Official DigitalOcean CLI. Manage Droplets, Kubernetes clusters, managed databases, Spaces object storage, App Platform deployments, and all DigitalOcean resources from the terminal.

Capabilities

+ Create, resize, and manage Droplets (VMs)
+ Provision and manage Kubernetes clusters (DOKS)
+ Deploy applications to DigitalOcean App Platform
+ Manage Spaces object storage (S3-compatible)
+ Configure load balancers, firewalls, and networking
+ Manage managed databases (Postgres, MySQL, Redis)

Use When

→ Managing DigitalOcean infrastructure from the terminal
→ Deploying applications to DigitalOcean App Platform
→ Provisioning Droplets or Kubernetes clusters via scripts
→ Automating DigitalOcean workflows in CI/CD pipelines

Avoid When

x Managing non-DigitalOcean cloud resources (use aws-cli, gcloud, az)
x Need multi-cloud infrastructure management (use Terraform)
x Complex enterprise cloud setups requiring hundreds of services

Usage Patterns

Create a Droplet

doctl compute droplet create my-server --region nyc1 --size s-1vcpu-1gb --image ubuntu-22-04-x64 --ssh-keys $(doctl compute ssh-key list --no-header --format ID)

Creates a 1GB Droplet in NYC1 with Ubuntu and existing SSH keys

List Kubernetes clusters

doctl kubernetes cluster list --format Name,Region,Version,Status

Lists all DOKS clusters with key details

Deploy an app

doctl apps create --spec .do/app.yaml

Deploys an application to App Platform using a spec file

Input / Output

stdin: Spec files can be piped for some commands

stdout: Formatted text tables or JSON API responses

Exit codes:

0 Success

1 Error

Typical Pipelines

doctl compute droplet list --format ID,Name,PublicIPv4,Status --no-header | fzf | awk '{print $3}' | xargs ssh root@

doctl kubernetes cluster kubeconfig save my-cluster && kubectl get pods

doctl compute droplet list -o json | jq '.[] | select(.status=="active") | {name, ip: .networks.v4[0].ip_address}'

Related Tools

aws-cli alternative

aws-cli for AWS; doctl is simpler for smaller-scale infrastructure

terraform complementary

Terraform can manage DigitalOcean resources declaratively alongside doctl

k9s complementary

k9s provides a TUI for Kubernetes clusters provisioned with doctl

View AGENTS.md for DigitalOcean CLI