---
layout: "intro"
page_title: "Installing Consul"
sidebar_current: "gettingstarted-install"
description: |-
  Consul must first be installed on every node that will be a member of the Consul cluster. To make installation easy, Consul is distributed as a binary package for all supported platforms and architectures. This page will not cover how to compile Consul from source.
---

# Install Consul

Consul must first be installed on every node that will be a member of the
Consul cluster. To make installation easy, Consul is distributed as a
[binary package](/downloads.html) for all supported platforms and
architectures. This page will not cover how to compile Consul from
source.

## Installing Consul

To install Consul, find the [appropriate package](/downloads.html) for
your system and download it. Consul is packaged as a "zip" archive.

After downloading Consul, unzip the package. Copy the `consul` binary to
somewhere on the `PATH` so that it can be executed. On Unix systems,
`~/bin` and `/usr/local/bin` are common installation directories,
depending on if you want to restrict the install to a single user or
expose it to the entire system. On Windows systems, you can put it
wherever you would like, as long as that location is on the `%PATH%`.

### OS X

If you are using [homebrew](http://brew.sh/#install) as a package manager,
you can install consul with:

```text
$ brew install consul
```

## Verifying the Installation

After installing Consul, verify the installation worked by opening a new
terminal session and checking that `consul` is available. By executing
`consul` you should see help output similar to this:

```text
$ consul
usage: consul [--version] [--help] <command> [<args>]

Available commands are:
    agent          Runs a Consul agent
    event          Fire a new event
    exec           Executes a command on Consul nodes
    force-leave    Forces a member of the cluster to enter the "left" state
    info           Provides debugging information for operators
    join           Tell Consul agent to join cluster
    keygen         Generates a new encryption key
    leave          Gracefully leaves the Consul cluster and shuts down
    members        Lists the members of a Consul cluster
    monitor        Stream logs from a Consul agent
    reload         Triggers the agent to reload configuration files
    version        Prints the Consul version
    watch          Watch for changes in Consul
```

If you get an error that `consul` could not be found, your `PATH`
environment variable was not set up properly. Please go back and ensure
that your `PATH` variable contains the directory where Consul was
installed.

## Next Steps

Consul is installed and ready for operation. Let's
[run the agent](agent.html)!