terraform-destroy

Destroy all resources in the current configuration

$ terraform destroy

$ terraform destroy -auto-approve

$ terraform destroy -target=[resource_type.resource_name]

$ terraform plan -destroy

$ terraform destroy -var '[name]=[value]'

$ terraform destroy -var-file=[prod.tfvars]

$ terraform destroy -parallelism=[5]

terraform destroy [options]

terraform destroy permanently deletes all infrastructure resources tracked in the current Terraform state file. It is a convenience alias for terraform apply -destroy.
The command reads the state file to identify managed resources, validates state against cloud provider APIs, builds a dependency graph to determine the correct reverse destruction order, presents a plan for confirmation, and then deletes resources via provider APIs. After completion, it updates the state file to reflect that the resources no longer exist.
It is designed primarily for ephemeral infrastructure in development and testing environments. For production, it should only be used in controlled decommissioning scenarios.

-auto-approve

Skip the interactive confirmation prompt

Destroy only the specified resource and its dependencies. Can be specified multiple times.

Set an input variable value. Can be specified multiple times.

Load variable values from a file

Control whether Terraform locks the state file. Default: true.

How long to wait to acquire the state lock. Example: 20s.

Limit concurrent resource operations. Default: 10.

Whether to refresh state before planning. Default: true.

Path to the state file. Default: terraform.tfstate.

Disable color output

This command is irreversible. Once resources are destroyed, the cloud provider removes them permanently and Terraform cannot restore them. If a destroy operation fails partway through, you may end up in a partially destroyed state. The command operates exclusively based on the state file and has no awareness of resources not tracked in state. Resources with deletion protection enabled at the provider level cannot be destroyed until protection is manually disabled. Configurations using lifecycle { prevent_destroy = true } will cause the destroy to fail with an error. Using -target for selective destruction can leave infrastructure in an inconsistent state and should be reserved for exceptional situations.

Terraform was created by Mitchell Hashimoto and Armon Dadgar at HashiCorp, with v0.1.0 released in July 2014. The destroy subcommand has been part of Terraform's core workflow since the earliest releases. In v0.15.2 (April 2021), terraform apply -destroy was added as the explicit form, making terraform destroy an official convenience alias. Terraform reached general availability with v1.0.0 in June 2021.

terraform(1), terraform-plan(1), terraform-apply(1)