Cheatsheet

AWS CLI Cheatsheet

A practical reference for configuring the AWS CLI and common usage of AWS services.

AWS
AWS CLI v2

2026-07-23•1 min read

Configure the CLI

If using SSO: IAM Identity Center, you can log in with:

terminal

# You will be prompted for an SSO session name, Default client Region, Output format and Login with URL.
aws configure sso
 
# To login after configuring SSO.
aws sso login

Identity and account

terminal

# Show the active IAM identity
aws sts get-caller-identity
 
# List IAM users
aws iam list-users

Compute

EC2

terminal

# List instances
aws ec2 describe-instances
 
# Start, stop, or reboot an instance
aws ec2 start-instances --instance-ids i-1234567890abcdef0
aws ec2 stop-instances --instance-ids i-1234567890abcdef0
aws ec2 reboot-instances --instance-ids i-1234567890abcdef0

Lambda

terminal

aws lambda list-functions
aws lambda invoke --function-name MyFunction output.json

ECS and EKS

terminal

aws ecs list-clusters
aws ecs list-services --cluster my-cluster
aws ecs list-tasks --cluster my-cluster
 
aws eks list-clusters
aws eks update-kubeconfig --region us-east-1 --name my-cluster

Storage and containers

S3

terminal

# List buckets and files
aws s3 ls
aws s3 ls s3://my-bucket
 
# Copy, sync, and remove files
aws s3 cp file.txt s3://my-bucket/
aws s3 sync ./folder s3://my-bucket/folder
aws s3 rm s3://my-bucket/file.txt

ECR login

terminal

aws ecr get-login-password \
  | docker login \
  --username AWS \
  --password-stdin <account-id>.dkr.ecr.<region>.amazonaws.com

Data, logs, and infrastructure

terminal

# CloudWatch
aws logs describe-log-groups
aws logs describe-log-streams --log-group-name /aws/lambda/MyFunction
 
# RDS
aws rds describe-db-instances
aws rds start-db-instance --db-instance-identifier mydb
aws rds stop-db-instance --db-instance-identifier mydb
 
# DynamoDB
aws dynamodb list-tables
aws dynamodb scan --table-name MyTable
 
# CloudFormation
aws cloudformation list-stacks
aws cloudformation describe-stacks --stack-name my-stack

Global options

Need	Command
Use a region	`aws ec2 describe-instances --region us-west-2`
Use a profile	`aws s3 ls --profile dev`
Format output	`aws ec2 describe-instances --output table`
Filter with JMESPath	`aws ec2 describe-instances --query "Reservations[].Instances[].[InstanceId,State.Name]"`

Help

terminal

aws help
aws ec2 help
aws ec2 describe-instances help
aws --version