How-To: Install the rad CLI

Learn how to install the rad CLI on your local machine

The rad CLI manages your applications, resources, and environments. You can install it on your local machine with the following installation scripts:


wget -q "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/radius-project/radius/main/deploy/install.sh" -O - | /bin/bash

To try out an unstable release visit the edge docs.


curl -fsSL "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/radius-project/radius/main/deploy/install.sh" | /bin/bash

To try out an unstable release visit the edge docs.


Run the following in a PowerShell window:

iwr -useb "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/radius-project/radius/main/deploy/install.ps1" | iex

You may need to refresh your $PATH environment variable to access rad:

$Env:Path = [System.Environment]::GetEnvironmentVariable("Path","User")

To try out an unstable release visit the edge docs.


Radius offers a free Codespace option for getting up and running with a Radius environment in seconds:

Open in GitHub Codespaces


Azure Cloud Shell is an interactive, authenticated, browser-accessible shell for managing Azure resources.

Azure Cloud Shell for bash doesn’t have a sudo command, so users are unable to install Radius to the default /usr/local/bin installation path. To install the rad CLI to the home directory, run the following commands:

export RADIUS_INSTALL_DIR=./
wget -q "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/radius-project/radius/main/deploy/install.sh" -O - | /bin/bash

You can now run the rad CLI with ./rad.

PowerShell for Cloud Shell is currently not supported.


Visit Radius GitHub releases to select and download a specific version of the rad CLI.

You may be prompted for your sudo password during installation, as the installer places the rad binary under /usr/local/bin. If you are unable to sudo you can install the rad CLI to another directory by setting the RADIUS_INSTALL_DIR environment variable with your intended install path. Make sure you add this to your path (Unix, Windows) if you wish to reference it via rad, like in the docs.

Verify the rad CLI is installed correctly by running rad version.

Example output:

RELEASE     VERSION     BICEP       COMMIT
0.38.0      v0.38        0.28.1     2e60bfb46de73ec5cc70485d53e67f8eaa914ba7