help | CLI commands

Print the help information for surreal db, or for one of its subcommands.

surreal db help and surreal help print different things. surreal db help is the database's own help, described on this page, because everything after db is forwarded to the database. surreal help and surreal --help are the launcher's help, which lists the components and the commands that manage what is installed. See Launcher help.

Usage

surreal db help [COMMAND]surreal db <COMMAND> --help

Global options

Name	Default	Environment variable	Description
`--online-version-check`	None	`SURREAL_ONLINE_VERSION_CHECK`	Whether to allow a web check for client version upgrades at start.
`--help, -h`	None	None	Print help. Accepted by the binary and by every subcommand.
`--version, -V`	None	None	Print the version of the database component.
`--log, -l<LOG>`	`info`	`SURREAL_LOG`	The logging level for the command-line tool. Possible values: `none`, `full`, `error`, `warn`, `info`, `debug`, `trace`.

Show the command-line help information

To see the general help information for the database, run surreal db help without any further arguments. This command lists the subcommands of surreal db.

surreal db help

The output of the above command:

Start, query, import and export SurrealDB from the command line

Usage: surreal [OPTIONS] <COMMAND>

Commands:
  start     Start the database server
  import    Import a SurrealQL script into an existing database
  export    Export an existing database as a SurrealQL script
  version   Output the command-line tool and remote server version information
  sql       Start an SQL REPL in your terminal with pipe support
  mcp       Start the MCP server over stdio for AI assistant integration
  is-ready  Check if the SurrealDB server is ready to accept connections [alias: isready]
  validate  Validate SurrealQL query files
  fix       Fix database storage issues
  help      Print this message or the help of the given subcommand(s)

Options:
  -v, --version  Print version
  -j, --json     Emit machine-readable JSON on stdout
  -h, --help     Print help

Logging:
  -l, --log <LOG>                              The logging level for the command-line tool [env: SURREAL_LOG] [default: info] [possible
                                               values: none, full, error, warn, info, debug, trace]
      --log-format <LOG_FORMAT>                The format for terminal log output [env: SURREAL_LOG_FORMAT] [default: text] [possible
                                               values: text, json]
      --log-socket <LOG_SOCKET>                Send logs to the specified host:port [env: SURREAL_LOG_SOCKET]
      --log-file-level <LOG_FILE_LEVEL>        Override the logging level for file output [env: SURREAL_LOG_FILE_LEVEL] [possible values:
                                               none, full, error, warn, info, debug, trace]
      --log-otel-level <LOG_OTEL_LEVEL>        Override the logging level for OpenTelemetry output [env: SURREAL_LOG_OTEL_LEVEL] [possible
                                               values: none, full, error, warn, info, debug, trace]
      --log-socket-level <LOG_SOCKET_LEVEL>    Override the logging level for unix socket output [env: SURREAL_LOG_SOCKET_LEVEL] [possible
                                               values: none, full, error, warn, info, debug, trace]
      --log-socket-format <LOG_SOCKET_FORMAT>  The format for socket output [env: SURREAL_LOG_SOCKET_FORMAT] [default: text] [possible
                                               values: text, json]
      --log-file-enabled                       Whether to enable log file output [env: SURREAL_LOG_FILE_ENABLED]
      --log-file-path <LOG_FILE_PATH>          The directory where log files will be stored [env: SURREAL_LOG_FILE_PATH] [default: logs]
      --log-file-name <LOG_FILE_NAME>          The name of the log file [env: SURREAL_LOG_FILE_NAME] [default: surrealdb.log]
      --log-file-format <LOG_FILE_FORMAT>      The format for log file output [env: SURREAL_LOG_FILE_FORMAT] [default: text] [possible
                                               values: text, json]
      --log-file-rotation <LOG_FILE_ROTATION>  The log file rotation interval [env: SURREAL_LOG_FILE_ROTATION] [default: daily] [possible
                                               values: daily, hourly, never]

The upgrade entry appears in the database's own list, but surreal db upgrade is refused. Use surreal upgrade db.

Launcher help

surreal help and surreal --help print the launcher's help. It lists the components (db, cloud), the commands that manage what is installed (version, install, upgrade, use, uninstall), and the +VERSION option that runs another version for one command. Run surreal <COMPONENT> help, such as surreal cloud help, for the help of a component. The --no-banner option, or SURREAL_CLI_NO_BANNER, prints the launcher help without the banner. See the launcher reference for each of these commands.

Getting help on individual commands

For individual commands, such as surreal db start and surreal db sql, a help prompt can be displayed by adding the --help flag. This flag overrides all other flags, and thus can be added to the end of any command regardless of length.

surreal db start --help
surreal db start --user root --pass secret --log debug --help