Required Ports

Consul requires up to 6 different ports to work properly, some on TCP, UDP, or both protocols. Below we document the requirements for each port.

Ports Table

Before running Consul, you should ensure the following bind ports are accessible.

Use	Default Ports
DNS: The DNS server (TCP and UDP)	8600
HTTP: The HTTP API (TCP Only)	8500
HTTPS: The HTTPs API	disabled (8501)*
gRPC: The gRPC API	disabled (8502)*
LAN Serf: The Serf LAN port (TCP and UDP)	8301
Wan Serf: The Serf WAN port (TCP and UDP)	8302
server: Server RPC address (TCP Only)	8300
Sidecar Proxy Min: Inclusive min port number to use for automatically assigned sidecar service registrations.	21000
Sidecar Proxy Max: Inclusive max port number to use for automatically assigned sidecar service registrations.	21255

*For HTTPS and gRPC the ports specified in the table are recommendations.

Port Information

DNS Interface Used to resolve DNS queries.

HTTP API This is used by clients to talk to the HTTP API.

HTTPS API (Optional) Is off by default, but port 8501 is a convention used by various tools as the default.

gRPC API (Optional). Currently gRPC is only used to expose the xDS API to Envoy proxies. It is off by default, but port 8502 is a convention used by various tools as the default. Defaults to 8502 in -dev mode.

Serf LAN This is used to handle gossip in the LAN. Required by all agents.

Serf WAN This is used by servers to gossip over the WAN, to other servers. As of Consul 0.8 the WAN join flooding feature requires the Serf WAN port (TCP/UDP) to be listening on both WAN and LAN interfaces. See also: Consul 0.8.0 CHANGELOG and GH-3058

Server RPC This is used by servers to handle incoming requests from other agents.

Note, the default ports can be changed in the agent configuration.