1. Install with Homebrew (macOS and Linux)
brew install realuptimehq/realuptime/realuptime. The tap formula installs the exact release tarball by URL and checksum and depends on Homebrew's node. Upgrade with brew upgrade realuptime.
2. Or install with npm from the GitHub release
npm install -g https://github.com/RealUptimeHQ/realuptime-cli/releases/download/cli-0.2.0/realuptime-cli-0.2.0.tgz. Node 22 or newer; the package has zero runtime dependencies. The registry package @realuptime/cli is not published yet; when it is, npm install -g @realuptime/cli will be the shorter form.
3. Verify the download if you want to
Every release ships SHA256SUMS and SHA256SUMS.sig beside the tarball. Fetch the public key from https://realuptime.io/.well-known/cosign.pub, run cosign verify-blob --key cosign.pub --signature SHA256SUMS.sig SHA256SUMS, then sha256sum -c SHA256SUMS.
4. Set a key and run a command
export REALUPTIME_API_KEY=ru_live_... then realuptime checks list. Keys come from the dashboard's API & MCP access section; the REST API is a Growth and Scale feature. realuptime outages <slug> needs no key at all: it reads the public outage endpoint. Add --json to any command for the untouched API response.
Go deeper
The full reference lives in the docs: CLI documentation. Error codes named above are each explained in the error-code reference.