---
title: What is the Azure Developer CLI?
description: Overview of the features and capabilities of the Azure Developer CLI that helps developers be more productive when building and deploying apps to Azure.
author: alexwolfmsft
ms.author: alexwolf
ms.date: 09/11/2026
ms.service: azure-dev-cli
ms.topic: overview
ms.custom: devx-track-azdevcli, build-2023
ai-usage: ai-generated
---

# What is the Azure Developer CLI?

Building and deploying cloud applications can be complex and time-consuming. Developers often face challenges such as setting up cloud infrastructure, configuring deployment pipelines, and ensuring best practices for security and scalability. Managing these tasks typically requires deep knowledge of Azure services, infrastructure as code, and DevOps processes, which can slow down development and increase the risk of errors.

The Azure Developer CLI (`azd`) is an open-source tool that accelerates provisioning and deploying app resources on Azure. `azd` provides best practice, developer-friendly commands that map to key stages in your development workflow, whether you're working in the terminal, an integrated development environment (IDE), or through CI/CD (continuous integration/continuous deployment) pipelines.

 `azd` uses [extensible blueprint templates](./azd-templates.md) that include everything you need to get an application up and running on Azure. These templates include:

- Reusable infrastructure as code assets to provision cloud resources services using Bicep or Terraform.
- Proof-of-concept or starter app code that can be customized or replaced with your own app code.
- Configuration files to handle deploying your app to the provisioned resources.
- Optionally, pipeline workflow files for GitHub Actions or Azure Pipelines to enable CI/CD integrations.

You can also [build your own template](./build-templates-overview.md) or find one to adapt in the [Azure Developer CLI template galleries](./azd-template-galleries.md).

## A sample `azd` workflow

The following steps demonstrate the basics of a common `azd` workflow. Visit the [installation](/azure/developer/azure-developer-cli/install-azd) and [quickstart](/azure/developer/azure-developer-cli/get-started) pages for more details on installing and getting started with `azd`.

You can install `azd` on common platforms using a single command:

### [Windows](#tab/windows)

```bash
winget install microsoft.azd
```

### [MacOS](#tab/mac)

```bash
brew install azure/azd/azd
```

### [Linux](#tab/linux)

```bash
curl -fsSL https://aka.ms/install-azd.sh | bash
```

---

After you install `azd`, provision and deploy app resources to Azure in only a few steps:

1. Select an [Azure Developer CLI template](./start-with-existing-template.md) such as the [`hello-azd`](https://github.com/Azure-Samples/hello-azd) demo template that contains the app resources you want to provision and deploy.
1. Run the [`azd init`](./get-started.md) command to initialize the template:

    ```azdeveloper
    azd init -t hello-azd
    ```

1. Run the [`azd up`](./get-started.md) command to package, provision and deploy the app resources:

    ```azdeveloper
    azd up
    ```

1. Iterate on the application code and deploy changes as needed by running `azd deploy`.
1. Update Azure resources by modifying the template's Infrastructure as Code (IaC) and then running `azd provision`.

    > [!NOTE]
    > Alternatively, you can also run `azd up` whenever you make a changes to your app code or infrastructure files, which handles both provisioning and deploying app resources. Visit the [reference page] for a complete list of `azd` commands.

## Introductory video

Check out the following video for a demonstration of working with `azd`. More `azd` video content is available on the [Microsoft Developer](https://www.youtube.com/@MicrosoftDeveloper) YouTube channel.

> [!VIDEO https://www.youtube.com/embed/f_HpDpEmWZ4?si=5Vf7BuRsO1hbsn0C]

## Next steps

- [View supported languages and environments](./supported-languages-environments.md)
- [Install the Azure Developer CLI](./install-azd.md).
- [Walk through the `azd` quickstart](./get-started.md) to see Azure Developer CLI in action.