Install Kuzu

Kuzu is an embedded graph database that can be used from the command line as well as a variety of programming languages. This page shows how to install Kuzu for the various client libraries available in various languages.

Command Line (Shell)

If you don’t need Kuzu embedded in your application, you can use the CLI shell. This is a standalone executable with no dependencies that can be used to interact with a Kuzu database using just Cypher.

Use a tool like cURL to download the latest version of the Kuzu CLI to your local machine.

x86-64

curl -L -O https://github.com/kuzudb/kuzu/releases/download/v0.10.0/kuzu_cli-linux-x86_64.tar.gz

aarch64

curl -L -O https://github.com/kuzudb/kuzu/releases/download/v0.10.0/kuzu_cli-linux-aarch64.tar.gz

Extract the kuzu_cli-linux-*.tar.gz archive to obtain a file named kuzu:

tar xzf kuzu_cli-linux-*.tar.gz

You can install the Kuzu CLI using Homebrew.

brew install kuzu

Use a tool like cURL to download the latest version of the Kuzu CLI to your local machine. Alternatively, simply copy-paste this URL into your browser.

curl -L -O https://github.com/kuzudb/kuzu/releases/download/v0.10.0/kuzu_cli-windows-x86_64.zip

Right-click on the kuzu_cli-xxx.zip file and click on Extract All. This will create a directory containing a file named kuzu.exe. Then, right-click on the directory and click “Open in terminal”. From within the terminal, you can then run ./kuzu.exe.

On Linux, macOS, and WSL2, you can also use Nix to run the Kuzu CLI.

Run Kuzu in a temporary shell:

nix-shell -p kuzu
kuzu

Alternatively, you can install Kuzu declaratively using Home Manager or NixOS configuration:

{
  environment.systemPackages = [ pkgs.nix ]; // NixOS
  home.packages = [ pkgs.nix ];              // Home Manager
}

Python

You can use uv, pip, or nix to install the Kuzu Python client library. The instructions are the same for Linux, macOS, and Windows.

uv init
uv add kuzu

pip install kuzu

nix-shell -p "python3.withPackages (ps: [ ps.kuzu ])"

Node.js

Use npm to install the Kuzu Node.js client library.

npm install kuzu

Java

The latest stable version is available on Maven Central.

<dependency>
    <groupId>com.kuzudb</groupId>
    <artifactId>kuzu</artifactId>
    <version>0.10.0</version>
</dependency>

Rust

Use Cargo to install the Kuzu Rust client library. This will by default build and statically link Kuzu’s C++ library from source. You can also link against the dynamic release libraries (see the Rust crate docs for details).

cargo add kuzu

Go

Kuzu’s Go API is a wrapper around the C API of Kuzu. The installation step below assumes that you have Go installed and available on your machine, and that there’s an initialized Go project that has a go.mod in the directory. If you need to create a new Go module, follow this tutorial.

go get github.com/kuzudb/go-kuzu

go get github.com/kuzudb/go-kuzu

C/C++

Use a tool like cURL to download the latest version of the Kuzu C/C++ binaries to your local machine (or, simply copy-paste the below HTTPS URL into your browser).

The Kuzu C++ client is distributed as so/dylib/dll+lib library files along with a header file (kuzu.hpp). Once you’ve downloaded and extracted the C++ files into a directory, it’s ready to use without any additional installation. You just need to specify the library search path for the linker.

x86-64

curl -L -O https://github.com/kuzudb/kuzu/releases/download/v0.10.0/libkuzu-linux-x86_64.tar.gz

aarch64

curl -L -O https://github.com/kuzudb/kuzu/releases/download/v0.10.0/libkuzu-linux-aarch64.tar.gz

curl -L -O https://github.com/kuzudb/kuzu/releases/download/v0.10.0/libkuzu-osx-universal.tar.gz

curl -L -O https://github.com/kuzudb/kuzu/releases/download/v0.10.0/libkuzu-windows-x86_64.zip

Nightly Builds

If you want access to the bleeding edge feature set in Kuzu, install from our nightly build pipeline.

Python: uv pip install --pre kuzu or pip install --pre kuzu
Node.js: npm i kuzu@next
Java: The latest snapshot version is available on GitHub Packages
For the CLI, C/C++ shared libraries, and Rust, the latest nightly versions for each can be downloaded from the latest run of this GitHub Actions pipeline.