Install or Update rpk

The rpk tool is a single binary application that provides a way to interact with your Redpanda clusters from the command line. For example, you can use rpk to do the following:

  • Monitor your cluster’s health

  • Create, produce, and consume from topics

  • Set up access control lists (ACLs) and other security features

For Redpanda Self-Managed deployments, the rpk binary is automatically installed on each Redpanda broker, so you can use the locally installed rpk binary to communicate with the local Redpanda cluster.

You can also install rpk on your local machine as a standalone binary. With this setup, you can connect to a Redpanda cluster on your local machine and to an external one on a remote server. If you use rpk as a standalone binary to communicate with a Redpanda cluster, your installed version of rpk must match the version of Redpanda running in your cluster.

Check rpk version

To check your current version of the rpk binary, run rpk --version.

The following example lists the latest version of rpk. If your installed version is lower than this latest version, then update rpk. For a list of versions, see Redpanda releases.

rpk --version
rpk version 25.1.1 (rev afe1a3f)

Install or update rpk on Linux

To install, or update to, the latest version of rpk for Linux, run:

  • amd64

  • arm64

curl -LO https://github.com/redpanda-data/redpanda/releases/latest/download/rpk-linux-amd64.zip &&
  mkdir -p ~/.local/bin &&
  export PATH="~/.local/bin:$PATH" &&
  unzip rpk-linux-amd64.zip -d ~/.local/bin/
curl -LO https://github.com/redpanda-data/redpanda/releases/latest/download/rpk-linux-arm64.zip &&
  mkdir -p ~/.local/bin &&
  export PATH="~/.local/bin:$PATH" &&
  unzip rpk-linux-arm64.zip -d ~/.local/bin/
You can use rpk on Windows only with WSL. However, commands that require Redpanda to be installed on your machine are not supported, such as rpk container commands, rpk iotune, and rpk redpanda commands.

To install, or update to, a version other than the latest, run:

  • amd64

  • arm64

curl -LO https://github.com/redpanda-data/redpanda/releases/download/v<version>/rpk-linux-amd64.zip &&
  mkdir -p ~/.local/bin &&
  export PATH="~/.local/bin:$PATH" &&
  unzip rpk-linux-amd64.zip -d ~/.local/bin/
curl -LO https://github.com/redpanda-data/redpanda/releases/download/v<version>/rpk-linux-arm64.zip &&
  mkdir -p ~/.local/bin &&
  export PATH="~/.local/bin:$PATH" &&
  unzip rpk-linux-arm64.zip -d ~/.local/bin/

Install or update rpk on macOS

  • Homebrew

  • Manual Download

  1. If you don’t have Homebrew installed, install it.

  2. To install or update rpk, run:

    brew install redpanda-data/tap/redpanda

To install or update rpk through a manual download, choose the option for your system architecture. For example, if you have an M1 or newer chip, select Apple Silicon.

  • Intel macOS

  • Apple Silicon

To install, or update to, the latest version of rpk for Intel macOS, run:

curl -LO https://github.com/redpanda-data/redpanda/releases/latest/download/rpk-darwin-amd64.zip &&
  mkdir -p ~/.local/bin &&
  export PATH="~/.local/bin:$PATH" &&
  unzip rpk-darwin-amd64.zip -d ~/.local/bin/

To install, or update to, a version other than the latest, run:

curl -LO https://github.com/redpanda-data/redpanda/releases/download/v<version>/rpk-darwin-amd64.zip &&
  mkdir -p ~/.local/bin &&
  export PATH="~/.local/bin:$PATH" &&
  unzip rpk-darwin-amd64.zip -d ~/.local/bin/

To install, or update to, the latest version of rpk for Apple Silicon, run:

curl -LO https://github.com/redpanda-data/redpanda/releases/latest/download/rpk-darwin-arm64.zip &&
  mkdir -p ~/.local/bin &&
  export PATH="~/.local/bin:$PATH" &&
  unzip rpk-darwin-arm64.zip -d ~/.local/bin/

To install, or update to, a version other than the latest, run:

curl -LO https://github.com/redpanda-data/redpanda/releases/download/v<version>/rpk-darwin-arm64.zip &&
  mkdir -p ~/.local/bin &&
  export PATH="~/.local/bin:$PATH" &&
  unzip rpk-darwin-arm64.zip -d ~/.local/bin/

Next steps

For the complete list of rpk commands and their syntax, see the rpk reference. Explore rpk with the Redpanda CLI Quickstart.