# Introduction


Unikraft Cloud is a from-first-principles virtualization solution and cloud platform based on **MicroVMs** which provides best-in-class performance, security, and scalability.

Running your app on Unikraft Cloud is like running a container but with hardware isolation, millisecond cold starts, and stateful scale-to-zero.

Expect higher server density, cost-savings, I/O performance boosts, active vCPU pricing and _much more_.

## Quick start

<Stepper>

1. [Create a free account](https://console.unikraft.cloud/signup).

1. Install the Unikraft CLI.

   <CodeTabs>

   ```bash title="1-liner (macOS & Linux)"
   curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -fsSL https://unikraft.com/cli/install.sh | sh
   ```

   ```bash title="macOS"
   brew install unikraft/cli/unikraft
   ```

   ```bash title="Debian/Ubuntu"
   # Update and install dependencies
   sudo apt update
   sudo apt install ca-certificates curl

   # Download and add the GPG key
   sudo install -d -m 0755 /etc/apt/keyrings

   sudo curl -fsSL \
     -o /etc/apt/keyrings/unikraft-cli.gpg \
     https://pkg.unikraft.com/debian/cli-apt/keys/cli-apt.gpg

   sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/unikraft-cli.sources <<EOF
   Types: deb
   URIs: https://pkg.unikraft.com/debian/cli-apt/
   Suites: $(. /etc/os-release && echo "$VERSION_CODENAME")
   Components: stable
   Signed-By: /etc/apt/keyrings/unikraft-cli.gpg
   EOF

   # Update and install
   sudo apt-get update
   sudo apt-get install unikraft-cli
   ```

   ```bash title="Fedora/RHEL/Rocky/Alma"
   # Add the Unikraft CLI repository
   sudo tee /etc/yum.repos.d/unikraft-cli-rpm.repo <<EOF
   [unikraft-cli]
   name=unikraft-cli
   baseurl=https://pkg.unikraft.com/rpm/cli-rpm/
   gpgcheck=0
   enabled=1
   EOF

   # Install the CLI at the specific pre-release version
   yum install unikraft-cli
   ```

   </CodeTabs>

   See [alternative installation instructions](https://github.com/unikraft/cli/?tab=readme-ov-file#installation) for other platforms.

1. Authenticate with your account.

   ```bash
   unikraft login
   ```

1. Deploy your first scale-to-zero, serverless app with Unikraft Cloud.

   ```bash
   unikraft run --metro=fra -p 443:8080/http+tls --image=nginx:latest
   ```

</Stepper>