Install step

It's trivial to install the step binary on your local machine.

Building from source?

Check out our guide to getting started with development.

Select your operating system or infrastructure:

macOS

Install step via Homebrew:

brew install step

To uninstall, run brew uninstall step and remove the $HOME/.step configuration directory.

Linux Packages (amd64)

Debian/Ubuntu

To add Smallstep as a source and install the step-cli package on Debian or Ubuntu distributions, run the following as root:

apt-get update && apt-get install -y --no-install-recommends curl vim gpg ca-certificates
curl -fsSL https://packages.smallstep.com/keys/apt/repo-signing-key.gpg -o /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/smallstep.asc && \
    echo 'deb [signed-by=/etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/smallstep.asc] https://packages.smallstep.com/stable/debian debs main' \
    | tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/smallstep.list
apt-get update && apt-get -y install step-cli

Alternatively, to manually install a .deb for step-cli, find the package you need for your platform on our GitHub release pages for smallstep/cli (step-cli).

To uninstall, run sudo dpkg -r step-cli and remove the $HOME/.step configuration directory.

RHEL/Fedora

To add Smallstep as a source and install the step-cli packages on RHEL or Fedora distributions, run the following as root:

cat <<EOT > /etc/yum.repos.d/smallstep.repo
[smallstep]
name=Smallstep
baseurl=https://packages.smallstep.com/stable/fedora/
enabled=1
repo_gpgcheck=0
gpgcheck=1
gpgkey=https://packages.smallstep.com/keys/smallstep-0x889B19391F774443.gpg
EOT
dnf makecache && dnf install -y step-cli step-ca

Alternatively, to manually install an .rpm for step-cli, find the packages you need for your platform on our GitHub release pages for smallstep/cli (step-cli).

To uninstall, run sudo dnf remove step-cli and remove the $HOME/.step configuration directory.

Arch Linux

There is a community-maintained step-cli package.

Use pacman to install step:

sudo pacman -S step-cli

The Arch package installs step as step-cli. Add a symlink to address this:

sudo ln -s /usr/bin/step-cli /usr/local/bin/step

To uninstall, run sudo pacman -R step-cli and remove the $HOME/.step configuration directory.

Big shout out to the maintainers of these packages! We appreciate you.

Alpine Linux

There is a community-maintained step-cli package for Alpine Linux.

Use apk to install step:

apk add step-cli

To uninstall, run apk del step-cli and remove the $HOME/.step configuration directory.

Big shout out to the maintainers of these packages! We appreciate you.

NixOS

Install the step-cli package on NixOS.

FreeBSD

Install the step-cli package on FreeBSD.

Wolfi

Wolfi has a maintained step package.

Use apk to install step:

apk add step

To uninstall, run apk del step and remove the $HOME/.step configuration directory.

Linux Binaries

We have 386, amd64, arm64, armv7, mips, and mips64 releases available to download from our latest release.

Place the binary in /usr/bin for compatibility with the rest of our documentation.

Binary Signature Verification

We use cosign for signing and verifying release artifacts. To verify the signature of the step-ca binary:

  1. Install cosign

  2. Download the binary signature (.sig) and certificate (.pem) files from the Assets section of our GitHub Releases page

  3. Run:

    cosign verify-blob \
      --certificate step_linux_amd64.tar.gz.pem \
      --signature step_linux_amd64.tar.gz.sig \
      --certificate-identity-regexp "https://github\.com/smallstep/workflows/.*" \
      --certificate-oidc-issuer https://token.actions.githubusercontent.com \
      step_linux_amd64.tar.gz
    

Windows

Install via Winget

Install step via Winget:

winget install Smallstep.step

After installing, you may need to restart your terminal for step to be in your path.

To uninstall, run winget uninstall Smallstep.step and remove the $HOME/.step configuration directory.

Install via Scoop

Install step via scoop:

scoop bucket add smallstep https://github.com/smallstep/scoop-bucket.git
scoop install smallstep/step

To uninstall, run scoop remove step and remove the $HOME/.step configuration directory.

Install manually

Download the Windows binary from our latest releases page and install it using PowerShell.

Open PowerShell and run the following:

curl.exe -LO https://dl.smallstep.com/cli/docs-cli-install/latest/step_windows_amd64.zip
Expand-Archive -LiteralPath .\step_windows_amd64.zip -DestinationPath .
step_windows_amd64\bin\step.exe version

Finally, move the step.exe binary wherever you'd like it to into a location in your user's PATH.

Testing your installation

$ step certificate inspect https://smallstep.com
Certificate:
    Data:
        Version: 3 (0x2)
        Serial Number: 326381749415081530968054238478851085504954 (0x3bf265673332db2d0c70e48a163fb7d11ba)
    Signature Algorithm: SHA256-RSA
        Issuer: C=US,O=Let's Encrypt,CN=Let's Encrypt Authority X3
        Validity
            Not Before: Feb 8 13:07:44 2019 UTC
            Not After : May 9 13:07:44 2019 UTC
        Subject: CN=smallstep.com
[...]

Last updated on April 8, 2025