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How to Destroy a Vultr Cloud Compute Instance

Updated on November 27, 2024

Destroying an instance removes the public IP address and deletes the server from your Vultr account. Destroying an instance cannot be reversed and any instance data cannot be recovered unless a backup or snapshot is available in your Vultr account.

Follow this guide to destroy a Vultr Cloud Compute instance using the Vultr Customer Portal, API, or CLI.

  • Vultr Customer Portal
  • Vultr API
  • Vultr CLI

  1. Navigate to Products and click Compute.

    Navigate to Products in the Vultr Customer Portal

  2. Click your target Cloud Compute instance to open its management page.

    Open the Instance management panel

  3. Click Destroy Server on the top-right navigation menu to destroy the server instance.

    Destroy the instance

  4. Check the confirmation prompt and click Destroy Server to apply changes.

    Apply the Destroy Server changes

  1. Send a GET request to the List Instances endpoint and note the target instance's ID in your output.

    console 
    $ curl "https://api.vultr.com/v2/instances" \
  -X GET \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer ${VULTR_API_KEY}"

  2. Send a DELETE request to the Delete Instance endpoint to destroy the target instance.

    console 
    $ curl "https://api.vultr.com/v2/instances/{instance-id}" \
  -X DELETE \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer ${VULTR_API_KEY}"

  1. List all instances available in your Vultr account and note the target instance's ID.

    console 
    $ vultr-cli instance list

  2. Destroy the target instance.

    console 
    $ vultr-cli instance delete <instance_id>