5. Install WP-CLI

Installation

Downloading the Phar file is our recommended installation method for most users. Should you need, see also our documentation on alternative installation methods (Composer, Homebrew, Docker).

Before installing WP-CLI, please make sure your environment meets the minimum requirements:

UNIX-like environment (OS X, Linux, FreeBSD, Cygwin); limited support in Windows environment
PHP 5.6 or later
WordPress 3.7 or later. Versions older than the latest WordPress release may have degraded functionality

Once you’ve verified requirements, download the wp-cli.phar file using wget or curl:

curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/wp-cli/builds/gh-pages/phar/wp-cli.phar

Next, check the Phar file to verify that it’s working:

php wp-cli.phar --info

To use WP-CLI from the command line by typing wp, make the file executable and move it to somewhere in your PATH. For example:

chmod +x wp-cli.phar
sudo mv wp-cli.phar /usr/local/bin/wp

If WP-CLI was installed successfully, you should see something like this when you run wp --info:

$ wp --info
OS:     Linux 5.10.60.1-microsoft-standard-WSL2 #1 SMP Wed Aug 25 23:20:18 UTC 2021 x86_64
Shell:  /usr/bin/zsh
PHP binary:     /usr/bin/php8.1
PHP version:    8.1.0
php.ini used:   /etc/php/8.1/cli/php.ini
MySQL binary:   /usr/bin/mysql
MySQL version:  mysql  Ver 8.0.27-0ubuntu0.20.04.1 for Linux on x86_64 ((Ubuntu))
SQL modes:
WP-CLI root dir:        /home/wp-cli/
WP-CLI vendor dir:      /home/wp-cli/vendor
WP_CLI phar path:
WP-CLI packages dir:    /home/wp-cli/.wp-cli/packages/
WP-CLI global config:
WP-CLI project config:  /home/wp-cli/wp-cli.yml
WP-CLI version: 2.11.0

Updating

You can update WP-CLI with wp cli update (doc), or by repeating the installation steps.

If WP-CLI is owned by root or another system user, you’ll need to run sudo wp cli update.

Want to live life on the edge? Run wp cli update --nightly to use the latest nightly build of WP-CLI. The nightly build is more or less stable enough for you to use in your development environment, and always includes the latest and greatest WP-CLI features.

Tab completions

WP-CLI also comes with a tab completion script for Bash and ZSH. Just download wp-completion.bash and source it from ~/.bash_profile:

source /FULL/PATH/TO/wp-completion.bash

Don’t forget to run source ~/.bash_profile afterwards.

If using zsh for your shell, you may need to load and start bashcompinit before sourcing. Put the following in your .zshrc:

autoload bashcompinit
bashcompinit
source /FULL/PATH/TO/wp-completion.bash

Allow root instance

To allow cli usage with root permission simply add this enviroment variable:

export WP_CLI_ALLOW_ROOT=1

Last modified: 14 January 2025