Install

Ory Talos runs on Linux, macOS, and Windows on the AMD64 and ARM64 architectures. Install with Homebrew or Scoop, run the Docker image, or download a pre-built binary.

Install with Homebrew

On macOS and Linux, install Ory Talos from the Ory Homebrew tap:

brew install ory/tap/talos
talos help

Install with Scoop

On Windows, install Ory Talos from the Ory Scoop bucket:

scoop bucket add ory https://github.com/ory/scoop.git
scoop install ory/talos

Docker

Ory Talos publishes a Docker image to Docker Hub:

docker pull oryd/talos:<version-you-want>
docker run --rm -it oryd/talos:<version-you-want> help

A Docker Compose stack ships with the source tree for local development. Clone the repository to fetch the compose file:

git clone https://github.com/ory/talos.git
cd talos
docker compose -f docker-compose.oss.yaml up --build

This builds the OSS binary, runs migrations against SQLite, and serves the API on http://localhost:8080, with the health endpoint at http://localhost:4422/health/alive. See Docker deployment for production images and configuration.

Download a pre-built binary

Every GitHub release ships pre-built archives for Linux, macOS, and Windows on AMD64 and ARM64, alongside a checksums.txt file. Download the archive for your platform, verify it against the checksum, and extract the talos binary. There is no installer.

# Example: Linux AMD64. Replace the version and platform to match your system.
VERSION=<version-you-want>
curl -sSL -o talos.tar.gz \
  "https://github.com/ory/talos/releases/download/v${VERSION}/talos_${VERSION}_linux_amd64.tar.gz"
tar -xzf talos.tar.gz talos
./talos help

To run Ory Talos from anywhere, move the binary into your $PATH:

sudo mv ./talos /usr/local/bin/
talos help

Windows archives are .zip files. Extract talos.exe and add it to your PATH.

Verify the installation

talos --version

Run database migrations

Create the database schema before you start the server:

# SQLite (OSS)
talos migrate up --database "sqlite3://./data/talos.db"

The Commercial edition adds PostgreSQL, MySQL, and CockroachDB backends. Run migrations for those with the oryd/talos-commercial Docker image. See the migrations guide for details.

Start the server

talos serve --config config.yaml

serve requires at minimum these keys: db.dsn, secrets.hmac.current (32+ chars), and credentials.issuer. See Configure for the minimal YAML and the Configuration reference for all keys.