SSH Access

Every pod has a dedicated SSH port, allowing you to connect directly to your container with any SSH client.

Connection Details

Find your pod’s SSH details on the SSH tab of the pod detail page. It shows the exact ssh command for your pod, plus ready-made scp and sftp commands. The SSH connection format is:

ssh instapod@<server-host> -p <port>

For example:

ssh instapod@203.0.113.10 -p 2201

Adding SSH Keys

Via CLI

# Add your default key (~/.ssh/id_ed25519.pub or ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub)
instapods ssh-keys add my-app

# Add a specific key
instapods ssh-keys add my-app --key ~/.ssh/work_key.pub

Via Dashboard

Go to your pod’s SSH tab
Paste your public key in the text field
Click Add Key

Paste the contents of your .pub file: one line that starts with ssh-ed25519, ssh-rsa, ecdsa-sha2- or sk-ssh-. A key fingerprint (SHA256:...) is not a key and is rejected, and so is more than one key in a single paste - add them one at a time.

cat ~/.ssh/id_ed25519.pub

Via API

curl -X POST https://app.instapods.com/api/pods/my-app/ssh/keys \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"key": "ssh-ed25519 AAAA... user@host"}'

At Pod Creation

You can also include an SSH key when creating a pod:

instapods pods create my-app --preset nodejs --ssh-key ~/.ssh/id_ed25519.pub

Host Key Verification

InstaPods uses Trust On First Use (TOFU) for SSH security:

First connection: The host key is automatically accepted and saved to ~/.ssh/known_hosts
Subsequent connections: The saved key is verified. If it matches, you connect normally
Key mismatch: You’ll see a warning. This shouldn’t happen for a running pod

When you delete a pod, the CLI automatically removes the old host key from your known_hosts file to prevent conflicts when the SSH port is reused.

SSH Port Allocation

Each pod gets a unique SSH port in the range 2200–3200. Ports are assigned automatically at pod creation. To prevent host key conflicts, deleted pods’ ports are not reused for 7 days.

SCP / SFTP

SCP and SFTP use the same host, port and key as SSH. The only difference is the port flag: ssh takes a lowercase -p, while scp and sftp take a capital -P. The SSH tab shows both commands ready to copy.

Don’t copy the -p PORT from the ssh command into scp. To scp, lowercase -p means “preserve file times”, so it fails with stat local "2201": No such file or directory. Leaving the port out fails too: scp connects to the server’s port 22 instead of your pod and gets Permission denied (publickey).

# Upload a file
scp -P 2201 ./app.js instapod@203.0.113.10:/home/instapod/app/

# Download a file
scp -P 2201 instapod@203.0.113.10:/home/instapod/app/config.json ./

# Upload a directory
scp -P 2201 -r ./project/ instapod@203.0.113.10:/home/instapod/app/

Or use SFTP for interactive file management:

sftp -P 2201 instapod@203.0.113.10

For large or repeated transfers, tar over SSH is faster than copying many small files one by one:

tar czf - ./project | ssh instapod@203.0.113.10 -p 2201 'tar xzf - -C /home/instapod/app'

Getting Started

Dashboard

Presets

Services

SSH & Files

Guides

Partners

Support

Connection Details

Adding SSH Keys

Via CLI

Via Dashboard

Via API

At Pod Creation

Host Key Verification

SSH Port Allocation

SCP / SFTP

​Connection Details

​Adding SSH Keys

​Via CLI

​Via Dashboard

​Via API

​At Pod Creation

​Host Key Verification

​SSH Port Allocation

​SCP / SFTP

Connection Details

Adding SSH Keys

Via CLI

Via Dashboard

Via API

At Pod Creation

Host Key Verification

SSH Port Allocation

SCP / SFTP