Portainerctl

portainerctl — Portainer's Official CLI

portainerctl is a full-featured Go CLI for Portainer Business Edition 2.39.1 that drives the complete Portainer REST API from the terminal — ideal for scripting and CI/CD GitOps workflows.

Overview

• Full BE API surface — environments, stacks, containers, Kubernetes workloads, edge compute, users/teams/RBAC, registries, GitOps, webhooks, backups, licensing, observability.
• Token auth + contexts — authenticate with a Portainer API token (PAT); store multiple servers as named contexts (kubeconfig-style) in ~/.portainerctl/config.yaml.
• Scriptable output — global -o table|json|yaml flag on every command; pipe JSON to jq.
• CI-friendly — PORTAINERCTL_URL / PORTAINERCTL_TOKEN / PORTAINERCTL_INSECURE env vars override the config file.
• Deploy from file or Git — Compose, Swarm, and Kubernetes stacks, plus edge stacks, locally or via GitOps.
• Passthroughs — Docker CLI and kubectl passthrough against managed environments.

Quick Start

# Install (Linux amd64)
curl -L https://github.com/portainer/portainerctl/releases/latest/download/portainerctl_linux_amd64.tar.gz | tar xz
sudo mv portainerctl /usr/local/bin/

# Authenticate (stores a named context)
portainerctl config add-context --name prod \
  --url https://portainer.example.com --token pt_yourpattoken
portainerctl config use-context prod

# List environments, then deploy a Compose stack to env 2
portainerctl env list
portainerctl stack deploy-compose --name myapp --env 2 --file docker-compose.yml

Core Concepts

• API token + contexts — auth is a Portainer PAT; contexts (name + url + token + insecure) live in ~/.portainerctl/config.yaml. Env vars override the active context for CI. See configuration.
• Environments — every resource command targets an environment (Docker/Swarm/K8s/Edge host) with --env <id>; groups and tags organize them. See environments.
• Stacks & GitOps — deploy Compose/Swarm/K8s stacks from a --file or a Git --repo; redeploy pulls the latest from Git. See stacks.
• Output — global -o table|json|yaml; list commands return arrays of objects, get/inspect return raw API objects. See configuration.

Documentation

• Installation & Build — binary download, build from source, GoReleaser, supported Portainer version
• Configuration, Auth & Output — contexts, API tokens, env-var overrides, -o formats
• Environments & Groups — environments, environment groups, tags, snapshots
• Stacks, Deploy & GitOps — deploy-compose/swarm/k8s, deploy-git, lifecycle, gitops utils, templates
• Docker Resources — containers, images, volumes, networks, docker CLI passthrough
• Kubernetes & Helm — API wrappers, Helm, kubectl passthrough (--, --raw)
• Edge Compute — edge stacks, groups, jobs, configs, update schedules
• Users, Teams, RBAC & Registries — users, teams, roles, resource controls, registries, webhooks
• Administration — licenses, backups, settings, system, observability, activity logs, cloud, policies, support
• Upstream README — full cached command reference

Common Workflows

• GitOps deploy in CI: export PORTAINERCTL_URL/PORTAINERCTL_TOKEN → portainerctl stack deploy-git --name app --env 2 --repo <url> --branch main --path docker-compose.yml; later stack redeploy <id> pulls latest.
• Audit environments: portainerctl env list -o json | jq '.[] | select(.status == "up")'.
• Roll out to edge fleet: portainerctl edge-group create --name "Stores" --dynamic --tags 3,4 → portainerctl edge-stack deploy --name app --file docker-compose.yml --groups 1.

Upstream Sources

• Repository: https://github.com/portainer/portainerctl (default branch develop)
• Releases: https://github.com/portainer/portainerctl/releases
• Portainer docs (background): https://docs.portainer.io/

Sync & Update

When user runs sync: fetch the latest README.md from portainer/portainerctl (branch develop) plus the cmd/*.go references, and refresh the cached docs/ files. When user runs diff: compare current docs/ vs upstream.