---
title: "The Grafana Alloy command-line interface | Grafana Cloud documentation"
description: "Learn about the Grafana Alloy command line interface"
---

> For a curated documentation index, see [llms.txt](/llms.txt). For the complete documentation index, see [llms-full.txt](/llms-full.txt).

# The Grafana Alloy command-line interface

The `alloy` binary exposes a command-line interface with subcommands to perform various operations.

The most common subcommand is [`run`](/docs/grafana-cloud/observe-and-act/send-data/alloy/reference/cli/run) which accepts a configuration file and starts Alloy.

Available commands:

- [`convert`](/docs/grafana-cloud/observe-and-act/send-data/alloy/reference/cli/convert): Convert an Alloy configuration file.
- [`fmt`](/docs/grafana-cloud/observe-and-act/send-data/alloy/reference/cli/fmt): Format an Alloy configuration file.
- [`gql`](/docs/grafana-cloud/observe-and-act/send-data/alloy/reference/cli/gql): Run a GraphQL query against a running Alloy instance.
- [`run`](/docs/grafana-cloud/observe-and-act/send-data/alloy/reference/cli/run): Start Alloy with the Default Engine, given an Alloy syntax configuration file.
- [`otel`](/docs/grafana-cloud/observe-and-act/send-data/alloy/reference/cli/otel): Start Alloy with the experimental OTel Engine, given an OpenTelemetry Collector YAML configuration file.
- [`tools`](/docs/grafana-cloud/observe-and-act/send-data/alloy/reference/cli/tools): Read the WAL and provide statistical information.
- [`validate`](/docs/grafana-cloud/observe-and-act/send-data/alloy/reference/cli/validate): Validate an Alloy configuration file or directory path.
- `completion`: Generate shell completion for the `alloy` CLI.
- `help`: Print help for supported commands.