Hetzner Cloud

Operate Hetzner Cloud through the hcloud CLI. When in doubt about server types, prices, locations, images, or flag syntax, run the discovery command rather than rely on this file or pretraining — the CLI is current.

Authenticate

Generate a token in Hetzner Console → project → Security → API Tokens, then either:

hcloud context create <name>      # interactive: stored in cli.toml, persists across shells
export HCLOUD_TOKEN="…"           # CI/scripts: most commands read this automatically

hcloud context create is the one common case that still prompts even with the env var set — pass --token-from-env to skip the prompt in non-interactive sessions.

Health check: hcloud datacenter list.

Mental model