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Quickstart

In a nutshell: There is a self-documenting command-line tool qlever, which is controlled by a single configuration file, called Qleverfile. For most applications, the qlever command-line tool is all you need to use QLever. See here for a complete reference of all the possible settings in a Qleverfile.

Installing QLever

Debian and Ubuntu

Uninstall old versions

Since 21.01.2026, there are official QLever packages for Debian, Ubuntu, and Ubuntu-derived distributions. Please uninstall any old versions of QLever that have been installed with other methods because they may conflict with the package.

pip uninstall qlever --break-system-packages

pipx uninstall qlever

uv tool uninstall qlever
Install QLever on Debian and Ubuntu
sudo apt update && sudo apt install -y wget gpg ca-certificates
wget -qO - https://packages.qlever.dev/pub.asc | gpg --dearmor | sudo tee /usr/share/keyrings/qlever.gpg > /dev/null
echo "deb [arch=amd64 signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/qlever.gpg] https://packages.qlever.dev/ $(. /etc/os-release && echo "${UBUNTU_CODENAME:-$VERSION_CODENAME}") main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/qlever.list
sudo apt update
sudo apt install qlever
Update QLever on Debian and Ubuntu
sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade qlever
Enable tab completion
sudo apt install bash-completion
echo "source /etc/bash_completion" >> ~/.bashrc
# restart your shell
Enable tab completion
echo "autoload -U compinit && compinit" >> ~/.zshrc
# restart your shell
Enable tab completion
# Nothing to do

macOS (Apple Silicon)

On macOS, we recommend installing QLever via Homebrew.

Uninstall old versions

Since 21.01.2026, there is an official QLever packages for macOS. Please uninstall any old versions of QLever that have been installed with other methods because they may conflict with the new package.

pip uninstall qlever --break-system-packages

pipx uninstall qlever

uv tool uninstall qlever
Install QLever via Homebrew
brew tap qlever-dev/qlever
brew install qlever
Update QLever via Homebrew
brew update
brew upgrade qlever

Others

For any of the platforms not listed above you can install the qlever CLI tool using system independent methods. Note: QLever will be executed in a container which will come with a performance penalty.

Install QLever via pip
# inside a virtual environment
pip install qlever
Install QLever via pipx
pipx install qlever
Install QLever via uv
uv tool install qlever
Update QLever via pip
# inside a virtual environment
pip uninstall qlever && pip install qlever
Update QLever via pipx
pipx upgrade qlever
Install QLever via uv
uv tool upgrade qlever

Using QLever

# inside a virtual environment
qlever setup-config olympics # Get Qleverfile (config file) for this dataset
qlever get-data              # Download the dataset
qlever index                 # Build index data structures for this dataset
qlever start                 # Start a QLever server using that index
qlever query                 # optional: Launch an example query
qlever ui                    # optional: Launch the QLever UI

qlever setup-config olympics # Get Qleverfile (config file) for this dataset
qlever get-data              # Download the dataset
qlever index                 # Build index data structures for this dataset
qlever start                 # Start a QLever server using that index
qlever query                 # optional: Launch an example query
qlever ui                    # optional: Launch the QLever UI

uvx qlever setup-config olympics # Get Qleverfile (config file) for this dataset
uvx qlever get-data              # Download the dataset
uvx qlever index                 # Build index data structures for this dataset
uvx qlever start                 # Start a QLever server using that index
uvx qlever query                 # optional: Launch an example query
uvx qlever ui                    # optional: Launch the QLever UI

This will create a SPARQL endpoint for the 120 Years of Olympics dataset. It is a great dataset for getting started because it is small, but not trivial (around 2 million triples), and the downloading and indexing should only take a few seconds.

Each command will also show you the command line it uses. That way you can learn, on the side, how QLever works internally. If you just want to know the command line for a particular command, without executing it, you can append --show like this:

qlever index --show

There are many more commands and options, see qlever --help for general help, qlever <command> --help for help on a specific command, or just use the autocompletion.

Code and further documentation

The code for the qlever command-line tool can be found at https://github.com/qlever-dev/qlever-control. There you also find more information on the usage on macOS and Windows, for usage with your own dataset, and for developers.