generated: '2026-06-20'
method: searched
source: https://cloud.google.com/sdk/docs, https://cloud.google.com/sdk/gcloud/reference
name: Google Cloud CLI (gcloud)
description: >-
  First-party unified command-line interface for Google Cloud. Ships in the
  Google Cloud SDK bundle alongside gsutil (Cloud Storage), bq (BigQuery), and
  the gcloud CLI itself. Manages and inspects nearly every GCP service.
binary: gcloud
package_ref: packages/google-cloud-platform-packages.yml
install:
  - method: interactive-installer
    command: curl https://sdk.cloud.google.com | bash
  - method: apt
    command: apt-get install google-cloud-cli
  - method: brew
    command: brew install --cask google-cloud-sdk
  - method: docker
    command: docker pull gcr.io/google.com/cloudsdktool/google-cloud-cli
auth_flows:
  - gcloud auth login
  - gcloud auth application-default login
  - gcloud auth activate-service-account --key-file=KEY.json
  - gcloud config set project PROJECT_ID
command_groups:
  - group: projects
    resource: Cloud Resource Manager projects
    examples: [gcloud projects list, gcloud projects create, gcloud projects add-iam-policy-binding]
  - group: resource-manager folders
    resource: Cloud Resource Manager folders
    examples: [gcloud resource-manager folders list, gcloud resource-manager folders create]
  - group: resource-manager org-policies
    resource: Organization policies
  - group: compute
    resource: Compute Engine
  - group: storage
    resource: Cloud Storage (also `gsutil`)
  - group: container
    resource: Google Kubernetes Engine
  - group: run
    resource: Cloud Run
  - group: functions
    resource: Cloud Functions
  - group: iam
    resource: IAM service accounts, roles, workload identity
  - group: pubsub
    resource: Pub/Sub topics and subscriptions
  - group: sql
    resource: Cloud SQL instances
  - group: bigquery (bq)
    resource: BigQuery datasets, tables, queries
  - group: secrets
    resource: Secret Manager
  - group: services
    resource: Service Usage (enable/disable APIs, quotas)
companion_tools:
  - {name: gsutil, purpose: Cloud Storage object operations}
  - {name: bq, purpose: BigQuery query and dataset management}
  - {name: gcloud emulators, purpose: local emulators for Firestore, Pub/Sub, Bigtable, Spanner, Datastore}