terraform apply Command Reference

Execute the planned changes against your real infrastructure.

terraform apply carries out the actions in a plan. In CI you apply a saved plan file so the change matches exactly what was reviewed; interactively you pass -auto-approve.

What it does

terraform apply provisions, updates, or destroys resources to match the plan. Given a saved plan file it applies it with no prompt; given no plan it generates one and asks for confirmation unless -auto-approve is set.

Common flags and usage

(plan file): apply a saved plan exactly as reviewed
-auto-approve: skip the interactive approval prompt
-input=false: never prompt (required in CI)
-parallelism=N: limit concurrent resource operations
-target=ADDR: apply only specific resources

Example

shell

# Apply the exact plan produced earlier in the pipeline
terraform apply -input=false tfplan

# Or apply directly, skipping the approval prompt
terraform apply -input=false -auto-approve -var-file=prod.tfvars

In CI

Prefer applying a saved tfplan over -auto-approve so the change can never drift from review. Keep the Terraform CLI version identical between plan and apply, since the saved plan binary format is version-specific.

Key takeaways

Apply a saved plan file in CI so the change exactly matches what was reviewed.
-auto-approve skips confirmation for ad hoc or direct applies.
Use the same CLI version for plan and apply; the saved plan is version-specific.