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How to Delete a Vultr Cloud Compute Instance

Updated on 11 September, 2025

Learn how to permanently remove a Vultr Cloud Compute instance from your account.

Deleting an instance permanently erases the server's file system and removes all IP information. This action is irreversible and any data on the instance data is lost unless a backup or snapshot is available in your Vultr account.

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

Warning
Deleting an instance is permanent and irreversible. Take a snapshot of the instance if want to recover the instance at a later time.
  • Vultr Customer Portal
  • Vultr API
  • Vultr CLI
  • Terraform
  1. Navigate to Products and click Compute.
  2. Click your target Vultr Cloud Compute instance to open its management page.
  3. Click Destroy Server on the top-right navigation menu to delete the server instance.
  4. Check the confirmation prompt and click Destroy Server to apply changes.

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

    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 delete the instance.

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

  1. List all available instances and note your target instance's ID.

    console 
    $ vultr-cli instance list

  2. Delete the target instance.

    console 
    $ vultr-cli instance delete <instance_id>

  1. Open your Terraform configuration and locate the Cloud Compute instance resource.

  2. Remove the resource block or set its lifecycle to destroy.

    terraform 
    resource "vultr_instance" "cc" {
    label    = "cc-instance-1"
    region   = "del"
    plan     = "vc2-2c-4gb"
    os_id    = 2284
    hostname = "cc-instance-1"
}

# To delete, either remove this block from configuration
# or run: terraform destroy -target vultr_instance.cc

  3. Apply the configuration and observe the following output:

    Apply complete! Resources: 0 added, 0 changed, 1 destroyed.

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