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Cloptima CLI Getting Started

7 min readUpdated March 2026

Install in Under a Minute

On macOS, install via Homebrew: brew tap cloptima/tap && brew install cloptima-cli. If you prefer containers, use docker.io/cloptimaai/cloptima-cli:latest. The executable command is cloptima in both cases.

Authenticate Securely

For local development, run cloptima auth login to store credentials in your OS keychain. For automation, set CLOPTIMA_ACCESS_TOKEN as an environment variable. This keeps secrets out of shell history and lets pipelines run non-interactively.

Verify Setup

Start with cloptima version, then cloptima accounts list to confirm organization access. Use cloptima status --cloud-account-id <uuid> to check onboarding and ingestion health before running deeper analysis commands.

Run Your First Cost Query

Use cloptima costs --cloud-account-id <uuid> --start-date YYYY-MM-DD --end-date YYYY-MM-DD for cloud costs, and cloptima k8s costs --cluster-id <uuid> for Kubernetes workloads. Add --output json for script and AI-agent workflows.

Find Savings and Risks

Run cloptima recommend --cloud-account-id <uuid> to inspect optimization opportunities and cloptima anomalies --cloud-account-id <uuid> to investigate unusual spend. These two commands usually surface the fastest first-week wins.

Next Steps

For team onboarding, share this setup with engineering and FinOps stakeholders. Then move to CI/CD guardrails using the dedicated pipeline guide so cost checks run on every release.

Put This Guide Into Practice

Cloptima automates the strategies described in this guide.

No credit card required
5-minute setup
30-day trial