Careful!
You are browsing documentation for a version of Kuma that is not the latest release.
macOS
If you only want the CLI, you can always use homebrew brew install kumactl.
To install and run Kuma execute the following steps:
Finally, you can follow the Quickstart to take it from here and continue your Kuma journey.
Download Kuma
Run the following script to automatically detect the operating system and download Kuma:
curl -L https://kuma.io/installer.sh | VERSION={"edition"=>"kuma", "version"=>"2.9.1", "release"=>"2.9.x", "latest"=>true, "releaseDate"=>"2024-10-22", "endOfLifeDate"=>"2025-10-22", "branch"=>"release-2.9"} sh -or you can <a href=”https://packages.konghq.com/public/kuma-legacy/raw/names/kuma-darwin-amd64/versions/{“edition”=>”kuma”, “version”=>”2.9.1”, “release”=>”2.9.x”, “latest”=>true, “releaseDate”=>”2024-10-22”, “endOfLifeDate”=>”2025-10-22”, “branch”=>”release-2.9”}/kuma-{“edition”=>”kuma”, “version”=>”2.9.1”, “release”=>”2.9.x”, “latest”=>true, “releaseDate”=>”2024-10-22”, “endOfLifeDate”=>”2025-10-22”, “branch”=>”release-2.9”}-darwin-amd64.tar.gz”>download</a> the distribution manually.
Then extract the archive with: tar xvzf kuma-{"edition"=>"kuma", "version"=>"2.9.1", "release"=>"2.9.x", "latest"=>true, "releaseDate"=>"2024-10-22", "endOfLifeDate"=>"2025-10-22", "branch"=>"release-2.9"}.
Make sure you have tar and gzip installed.
Run Kuma
Once downloaded, you will find the contents of Kuma in the kuma-{"edition"=>"kuma", "version"=>"2.9.1", "release"=>"2.9.x", "latest"=>true, "releaseDate"=>"2024-10-22", "endOfLifeDate"=>"2025-10-22", "branch"=>"release-2.9"} folder. In this folder, you will find - among other files - the bin directory that stores all the executables for Kuma.
You can start the control-plane with: kuma-{"edition"=>"kuma", "version"=>"2.9.1", "release"=>"2.9.x", "latest"=>true, "releaseDate"=>"2024-10-22", "endOfLifeDate"=>"2025-10-22", "branch"=>"release-2.9"}/bin/kuma-cp run
This example will run Kuma in standalone mode for a “flat” deployment, but there are more advanced deployment modes like “multi-zone”.
We suggest adding the kumactl executable to your PATH so that it’s always available in every working directory. Or - alternatively - you can also create link in /usr/local/bin/ by executing:
ln -s kuma-{"edition"=>"kuma", "version"=>"2.9.1", "release"=>"2.9.x", "latest"=>true, "releaseDate"=>"2024-10-22", "endOfLifeDate"=>"2025-10-22", "branch"=>"release-2.9"}/bin/kumactl /usr/local/bin/kumactl
Note: By default this will run Kuma with a memory store, but for production you have to use a persistent storage like PostgreSQL by updating the conf/kuma-cp.conf file.
Use Kuma
Kuma (kuma-cp) is now running! Now that Kuma has been installed you can access the control-plane via either the GUI, the HTTP API, or the CLI:
Kuma ships with a read-only GUI that you can use to retrieve Kuma resources. By default the GUI listens on the API port and defaults to :5681/gui.
To access Kuma you can navigate to 127.0.0.1:5681/gui to see the GUI.
You will notice that Kuma automatically creates a Mesh entity with name default.
Quickstart
Congratulations! You have successfully installed Kuma 🚀.
In order to start using Kuma, it’s time to check out the quickstart guide for Universal deployments.