🚀 Try Elasticsearch and Kibana locally

Run Elasticsearch and Kibana on your local machine using a simple shell script. This setup uses Docker behind the scenes to install and run the services.

Important

This script is for local testing only. Do not use it in production! For production installations refer to the official documentation for Elasticsearch and Kibana.

🌟 Features

This script comes with a one-month trial license. After the trial period, the license reverts to Free and open - Basic.

• Trial: Includes All features like the Playground, ELSER, semantic retrieval model, the Elastic Inference API and much more.
• Free and open - Basic: Includes features like vector search, ES|QL and much more.

For a complete list of subscriptions and features, see our subscriptions page.

💻 System requirements

• 5 GB of available disk space
• Docker
• Works on Linux and macOS
• On Microsoft Windows it works using Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL)

🏃‍♀️‍➡️ Getting started

Setup

Run the start-local script using curl:

curl -fsSL https://elastic.co/start-local | sh

This script creates an elastic-start-local folder containing:

• docker-compose.yml: Docker Compose configuration for Elasticsearch and Kibana
• .env: Environment settings, including the Elasticsearch password
• start.sh and stop.sh: Scripts to start and stop Elasticsearch and Kibana
• uninstall.sh: The script to uninstall Elasticsearch and Kibana

Select the version to install

By default, start-local uses the latest stable version of Elastic Stack. If you want, you can specify a different version using the -v parameter, as follows:

curl -fsSL https://elastic.co/start-local | sh -s -- -v 8.16.0

The previous command installs Elasticsearch and Kibana 8.16.0.

Using the -v parameter, you can also install beta releases, this can be useful for testing an upcoming release. For instance, you can install the 9.0.0-beta1 using the following command:

curl -fsSL https://elastic.co/start-local | sh -s -- -v 9.0.0-beta1

The 9.0.0-beta1 version was released on February 18, 2025.

Install only Elasticsearch

If you want to install only Elasticsearch, without Kibana, you can use the --esonly option as follows:

curl -fsSL https://elastic.co/start-local | sh -s -- --esonly

This command can be useful if you don't have enough resources and want to test only Elasticsearch.

Install the Elastic Distribution of OpenTelemetry (EDOT) Collector

You can install the EDOT Collector using the --edot option, as follows:

curl -fsSL https://elastic.co/start-local | sh -s -- --edot

This command will install the latest Elasticsearch, Kibana and EDOT collector.

Here you can find more information about Elastic Distributions of OpenTelemetry (EDOT).

🌐 Endpoints

After running the script:

• Elasticsearch will be running at http://localhost:9200
• Kibana will be running at http://localhost:5601

The script generates a random password for the elastic user, displayed at the end of the installation and stored in the .env file.

Caution

HTTPS is disabled, and Basic authentication is used for Elasticsearch. This configuration is for local testing only. For security, Elasticsearch and Kibana are accessible only via localhost.

🔑 API key

An API key for Elasticsearch is generated and stored in the .env file as ES_LOCAL_API_KEY. Use this key to connect to Elasticsearch with the Elastic SDK or REST API.

Check the connection to Elasticsearch using curl in the elastic-start-local folder:

source .env
curl $ES_LOCAL_URL -H "Authorization: ApiKey ${ES_LOCAL_API_KEY}"

🐳 Start and stop the services

You can use the start and stop commands available in the elastic-start-local folder.

To stop the Elasticsearch and Kibana Docker services, use the stop command:

cd elastic-start-local
./stop.sh

To start the Elasticsearch and Kibana Docker services, use the start command:

cd elastic-start-local
./start.sh

Docker Compose.

🗑️ Uninstallation

To remove the start-local installation:

cd elastic-start-local
./uninstall.sh

Warning

This erases all data permanently.

📝 Logging

If the installation fails, an error log is created in error-start-local.log. This file contains logs from Elasticsearch and Kibana, captured using the docker logs command.

⚙️ Customizing settings

To change settings (e.g., Elasticsearch password), edit the .env file. Example contents:

ES_LOCAL_VERSION=8.15.2
ES_LOCAL_URL=http://localhost:9200
ES_LOCAL_CONTAINER_NAME=es-local-dev
ES_LOCAL_DOCKER_NETWORK=elastic-net
ES_LOCAL_PASSWORD=hOalVFrN
ES_LOCAL_PORT=9200
KIBANA_LOCAL_CONTAINER_NAME=kibana-local-dev
KIBANA_LOCAL_PORT=5601
KIBANA_LOCAL_PASSWORD=YJFbhLJL
ES_LOCAL_API_KEY=df34grtk...==

Important

After changing the .env file, restart the services using stop and start:

cd elastic-start-local
./stop.sh
./start.sh

⚠️ Advanced settings with ENV variables

We offer some environment (ENV) variables for changing the settings of start-local. We suggest to use these ENV variables only for advanced use cases, e.g. CI/CD integrations. Please use caution when using these settings.

ES_LOCAL_PASSWORD

If you need to set the Elasticsearch password manually, you can do it using the ES_LOCAL_PASSWORD.

You need to set the env variable before the execution of the script, as follows:

curl -fsSL https://elastic.co/start-local | ES_LOCAL_PASSWORD="supersecret" sh

This command will set the supersecret password for Elasticsearch.

Please note that this command can be dangerous if you use a weak password for Elasticsearch authentication.

ES_LOCAL_DIR

By default, start-local creates an elastic-start-local folder. If you need to change it, you can use the ES_LOCAL_DIR env variable, as follows:

curl -fsSL https://elastic.co/start-local | ES_LOCAL_DIR="another-folder" sh

This command will creates the another-folder containing all the start-local files.

🧪 Testing the installer

We use bashunit to test the script. Tests are in the /tests folder.

Running tests

1. Install bashunit:

   curl -s https://bashunit.typeddevs.com/install.sh | bash

2. Run tests:

   lib/bashunit

The tests run start-local.sh and check if Elasticsearch and Kibana are working.

Note

For URL pipeline testing, a local web server is required. We used the Python http.server.