teleport – gravitational

Teleport provides connectivity, authentication, access controls and audit for
infrastructure.

You might use Teleport to:

• Set up single sign-on (SSO) for all of your cloud and on-prem

infrastructure.

• Protect access to servers, Kubernetes clusters, databases, Windows

desktops, web applications, and cloud APIs without long-lived keys or
passwords.

• Establish secure tunnels to reach resources behind NATs and firewalls

without VPNs or bastion hosts.

• Record and audit activity across SSH, Kubernetes, database, RDP, and web

sessions.

• Apply consistent Role-Based and Attribute-Based Access Control (RBAC/ABAC)

across users, machines, workloads, and resource types.

• Enforce least privilege and Just-in-Time (JIT) access requests for

elevated roles or sensitive systems.

• Maintain a single identity and access layer for both human users and

workloads.

Teleport works with SSH, Kubernetes, databases, RDP, cloud consoles,
internal web services, Git repositories, and Model Context Protocol (MCP)
servers.

More Information

Teleport Getting Started
Teleport Architecture
Reference Guides
FAQ

Table of Contents

1. Introduction
2. Why We Built Teleport
3. Supporting and Contributing
4. Installing and Running
5. Docker
6. Building Teleport
7. License
8. FAQ

Introduction

Teleport includes an identity-aware access proxy, a CA that issues short-lived
certificates, a unified access control system, and a tunneling system to access
resources behind the firewall.

Teleport is a single Go binary that integrates with multiple protocols and
cloud services, including

• SSH nodes
• Kubernetes clusters
• [PostgreSQL, MongoDB, CockroachDB and MySQL

databases](https://goteleport.com/docs/enroll-resources/database-access/)

• Model Context Protocol
• Internal Web apps
• Windows Hosts
• Networked servers

You can set up Teleport as a [Linux
daemon](https://goteleport.com/docs/admin-guides/deploy-a-cluster/linux-demo)
or a [Kubernetes
deployment](https://goteleport.com/docs/admin-guides/deploy-a-cluster/helm-deployments/).

Teleport focuses on best practices for infrastructure security, including:

• No shared secrets such as SSH keys or Kubernetes tokens; Teleport uses

certificate-based auth with automatic expiration for all protocols.

• Multi-factor authentication (MFA) for everything.
• Single sign-on (SSO) for everything via GitHub Auth, OpenID Connect, or

SAML with endpoints like Okta or Microsoft Entra ID.

• Session sharing for collaborative troubleshooting for issues.
• Infrastructure introspection to view the status of every SSH node, database

instance, Kubernetes cluster, or internal web app through the Teleport CLI
or Web UI.

Teleport uses Go crypto. It is
_fully compatible with OpenSSH_, sshd servers, and ssh clients,
Kubernetes clusters and more.

| Project Links | Description |
|----------------------------------------------------------------|-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| Teleport Website | The official website of the project. |
| Documentation | Admin guide, user manual and more. |
| Features | Explore the complete list of Teleport capabilities. |
| Blog | Our blog where we publish Teleport news and helpful articles. |
| Forum | Ask us a setup question or post tutorials, feedback, or ideas. |
| Developer Tools | Dozens of free browser-based tools for code processing, cryptography, data transformation, and more. |
| Teleport Academy | How-to guides, best practices, and deep dives into topics like SSH, Kubernetes, MCP, and more. |
| Slack | Need help with your setup? Ping us in our Slack channel. |
| Cloud & Self-Hosted | Teleport Enterprise is a cloud-hosted option for teams that require easy and secure access to their computing environments. |

Why We Built Teleport

While working together at Rackspace, the creators of Teleport noticed that
most cloud users struggle with setting up and configuring infrastructure
security. Many popular tools designed for this are complex to understand and
expensive to maintain across modern, distributed computing infrastructure.

We decided to build a solution that's easy to use, understand, and scale. A
real-time representation of all your servers in the same room as you, as if
they were magically teleported. And thus, Teleport was born!

Today, Teleport is trusted by everyone from hobbyists to hyperscalers to
simplify security across cloud CLIs and consoles, Kubernetes clusters, SSH
servers, databases, internal web apps, and Model Context Protocol (MCP) used
by AI agents.

Learn more about Teleport and our history

Supporting and Contributing

We aim to make Teleport easy to adopt and contribute to, starting with clear and comprehensive documentation.

If you have questions, are exploring ideas, or want to sanity-check something, please start with a GitHub Discussion. Discussions help us answer questions, explore use cases, and decide together whether something should become a bug report or feature request.

• Start a conversation in Teleport Discussions

This is the best place to ask questions, share ideas, and get help. Our engineers actively participate there, and discussions can be promoted to issues when there is a clear, actionable next step.

• Issues are for confirmed bugs and well-defined feature requests

If something has already been validated as a bug or an enhancement, feel free to open an issue. When in doubt, start a discussion and we will help guide it.

• Enterprise and POC support

If you are evaluating Teleport Enterprise or need more responsive support during a POC, we can set up a dedicated Slack channel. You can reach out to us through our website to get started.

Installing and Running

To set up a single-instance Teleport cluster, follow our [getting started
guide](https://goteleport.com/docs/admin-guides/deploy-a-cluster/linux-demo/).
You can then register your servers, Kubernetes clusters, and other
infrastructure with your Teleport cluster.

You can also get started with Teleport Enterprise Cloud, a managed Teleport
deployment that makes it easier to enable secure access to your
infrastructure.

Sign up for a free trial of Teleport
Enterprise Cloud, and follow this guide to [register your first
server](https://goteleport.com/docs/get-started/).

Docker

Deploy Teleport

If you wish to deploy Teleport inside a Docker container see the
installation guide.

For Local Testing and Development

To run a full test suite locally, see [the test dependencies
list](BUILD_macos.md#local-tests-dependencies)

Building Teleport

The teleport repository contains the Teleport daemon binary (written in Go)
and a web UI written in TypeScript.

If your intention is to build and deploy for use in a production infrastructure
a released tag should be used. The default branch, master, is the current
development branch for an upcoming major version. Get the latest release tags
listed at https://goteleport.com/download/ and then use that tag in the `git
clone. For example git clone
https://github.com/gravitational/teleport.git -b v18.5.0` gets release
v18.5.0.

Dockerized Build

It is often easiest to build with Docker, which ensures that all required
tooling is available for the build. To execute a dockerized build, ensure
that docker is installed and running, and execute:

make -C build.assets build-binaries

This command will build Linux binaries matching the host architecture.
It is not possible to cross-compile to a different target architecture.

Local Build

Dependencies

The following dependencies are required to build Teleport from source. For
maximum compatibility, install the versions of these dependencies using the
versions listed in <code class="ra0-md-code">build.assets/versions.mk</code>:

1. <code class="ra0-md-code">Go</code>
2. <code class="ra0-md-code">Rust</code>
3. <code class="ra0-md-code">Node.js</code>
4. <code class="ra0-md-code">libfido2</code>
5. <code class="ra0-md-code">pkg-config</code>

For an example of dev environment setup on macOS, see [these
instructions](/BUILD_macos.md).

Perform a build

>Important
>
>* The Go compiler is somewhat sensitive to the amount of memory: you will
need at least 1GB of virtual memory to compile Teleport. A 512MB
instance without swap will not work.
>* This will build the latest version of Teleport.

Get the source

git clone https://github.com/gravitational/teleport.git
cd teleport

To perform a build

make full

tsh dynamically links against libfido2 by default, to support development
environments, as long as the library itself can be found:

$ brew install libfido2 pkg-config  # Replace with your package manager of choice

$ make build/tsh
> libfido2 found, setting FIDO2=dynamic
> (...)

Release binaries are linked statically against libfido2. You may switch the
linking mode using the FIDO2 variable:

make build/tsh FIDO2=dynamic # dynamic linking
make build/tsh FIDO2=static  # static linking, for an easy setup use `make enter`
                             # or `build.assets/macos/build-fido2-macos.sh`.
make build/tsh FIDO2=off     # doesn't link libfido2 in any way

tsh builds with Touch ID support require access to an Apple Developer
account. If you are a Teleport maintainer, ask the team for access.

Build output and run locally

If the build succeeds, the installer will place the binaries in the build
directory.

Before starting, create default data directories:

sudo mkdir -p -m0700 /var/lib/teleport
sudo chown $USER /var/lib/teleport

Running Teleport in a hot reload mode

To speed up your development process, you can run Teleport using
<code class="ra0-md-code">CompileDaemon</code>. This will
build and run the Teleport binary, and then rebuild and restart it whenever
any Go source files change.

1. Install CompileDaemon:

    go install github.com/githubnemo/CompileDaemon@latest

Note that we use go install instead of the suggested go get, because
we don't want CompileDaemon to become a dependency of the project.

1. Build and run the Teleport binary:

    make teleport-hot-reload

By default, this runs a teleport start command. If you want to
customize the command, for example by providing a custom config file
location, you can use the TELEPORT_ARGS parameter:

    make teleport-hot-reload TELEPORT_ARGS='start --config=/path/to/config.yaml'

Note that you still need to run <code class="ra0-md-code">make grpc</code> if you
modify any Protocol Buffers files to regenerate the generated Go sources;
regenerating these sources should in turn cause the CompileDaemon to rebuild
and restart Teleport.

Web UI

The Teleport Web UI resides in the web directory.

Rebuilding Web UI for development

To rebuild the Teleport UI package, run the following command:

make docker-ui

Then you can replace Teleport Web UI files with the files from the
newly-generated /dist folder.

To enable speedy iterations on the Web UI, you can run a [local web-dev
server](web#web-ui).

You can also tell Teleport to load the Web UI assets from the source
directory. To enable this behavior, set the environment variable DEBUG=1
and rebuild with the default target:

# Run Teleport as a single-node cluster in development mode:
DEBUG=1 ./build/teleport start -d

Keep the server running in this mode, and make your UI changes in /dist
directory. For instructions about how to update the Web UI, read [the web
README](web#readme).

Managing dependencies

All dependencies are managed using [Go
modules](https://blog.golang.org/using-go-modules). Here are the
instructions for some common tasks:

Add a new dependency

Latest version:

go get github.com/new/dependency

and update the source to use this dependency.

To get a specific version, use `go get
github.com/new/dependency@version` instead.

Set dependency to a specific version

go get github.com/new/dependency@version

Update dependency to the latest version

go get -u github.com/new/dependency

Update all dependencies

go get -u all

Debugging dependencies

Why is a specific package imported?

go mod why $pkgname

Why is a specific module imported?

go mod why -m $modname

Why is a specific version of a module imported?

go mod graph | grep $modname

License

Teleport is distributed in multiple forms with different licensing
implications.

The Teleport API module (all code in this repository under /api) is
available under the Apache 2.0 license.

The remainder of the source code in this repository is available under the
GNU Affero General Public License. Users compiling Teleport
from source must comply with the terms of this license.

Teleport Community Edition builds distributed on
http://goteleport.com/download are available under a [modified Apache 2.0
license](./build.assets/LICENSE-community).

FAQ

Is Teleport production-ready?

Yes, Teleport is production-ready and used to protect and facilitate
access to the most precious and mission-critical applications at many of
today's leading companies. You can learn more about the companies using
Teleport in production on our website.

Is Teleport secure?

Yes, Teleport has completed several security audits from nationally and
internationally recognized technology security companies. We publicize
audit results, our security philosophy, and related information on our
trust page.

What resources does Teleport support?

Teleport secures access to a [broad set of infrastructure
resources](https://goteleport.com/docs/enroll-resources), including Linux
servers, Windows desktops, Kubernetes clusters, databases, internal web
applications, cloud provider APIs and consoles (such as AWS, Azure, and
GCP), and Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers used by AI agents.

How is Teleport deployed?

Teleport can be [deployed to fit most
environments](https://goteleport.com/docs/feature-matrix/#platform-integrations-management-licensing-and-deployment),
either as a self-hosted cluster on Linux or Kubernetes or using Teleport
Enterprise Cloud. In all cases, Teleport agents run close to your
resources and connect through an Auth Service and Proxy Service that
enforces identity, access control, and audit.

Is Teleport an identity provider (IdP)?

Teleport uses existing IdPs (Okta, Google Workspace, Microsoft Entra ID,
or GitHub) to issue short-lived certificates and apply access policies.
Teleport can also be [configured to act as a SAML
IdP](https://goteleport.com/docs/identity-governance/idps/) to authenticate
users into applications when needed.

Does Teleport require credential handling or secrets management?

Teleport eliminates long-lived passwords, SSH keys, database credentials,
credential rotations, and vault processes by issuing [short-lived,
auto-expiring mTLS and SSH
certificates](https://goteleport.com/docs/reference/architecture/authentication/#short-lived-certificates)
bound to human or non-human identity.

Is Teleport a Privileged Access Management (PAM) solution?

Teleport provides modern PAM software capabilities like strong
authentication, session recording, policy-based access, and JIT elevation
without secrets, credential rotation, or vault dependencies. This enables
controlled, audited access to servers, Kubernetes, databases, cloud
consoles, and other privileged environments using short-lived certificates
and role-based policies.

Is Teleport a Just-in-Time (JIT) access solution?

Teleport enables [JIT access through time-bound Access
Requests](https://goteleport.com/docs/identity-governance/access-requests/).
Users request the roles or resources they temporarily need, policies decide
whether approval is required, and privileges automatically expire. This
approach maintains least privilege while keeping access workflows
efficient and predictable.

Does Teleport secure access to Kubernetes?

Teleport can [proxy and secure Kubernetes
access](https://goteleport.com/docs/enroll-resources/kubernetes-access/introduction/)
with identity-based authentication, role-based access controls, and
detailed auditing of kubectl activity.

Does Teleport support SPIFFE?

Teleport supports [SPIFFE-compatible identities for
workloads](https://goteleport.com/docs/machine-workload-identity/workload-identity/spiffe/),
allowing it to participate in SPIFFE ecosystems and federation.
Teleport issues short-lived SVIDs and can integrate with external PKI
hierarchies.

Is Teleport an alternative for VPNs or bastion hosts?

Yes. Teleport is frequently used as an alternative to traditional VPNs
and bastion hosts, enabling [direct, identity-based access to
resources](https://goteleport.com/docs/core-concepts/#teleport-proxy-service)
instead of broad network access.

Does Teleport secure the Model Context Protocol (MCP) and AI agents?

Teleport [secures MCP
connections](https://goteleport.com/docs/connect-your-client/model-context-protocol/)
by placing identity-aware policy enforcement between MCP clients and
servers. This ensures all tool invocations are authenticated, authorized,
and audited without custom authorization code and that sensitive systems
are protected from overly broad access.