[Yandex Cloud documentation](../../../index.md) > [Yandex Compute Cloud](../../index.md) > [Step-by-step guides](../index.md) > Managing an instance group > Stopping an instance group

# Stopping an instance group

If you do not need instances in a group for now, stop the group. All VM instances in the group will be stopped. If an instance group is very large and creating that many VM instances is time-consuming, it is more efficient to stop the group rather than deleting it or scaling it down to zero.

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If you stop a single VM instance in a group rather than the entire group, Instance Groups will [automatically restart](../../concepts/instance-groups/autohealing.md) that instance.

{% endnote %}

For stopped instances, only disks are billable. If you do not want to pay for disk usage, scale down the instance group to zero or [delete the group](delete.md). To avoid losing data, [make snapshots of the disks](../disk-control/create-snapshot.md).

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- Management console {#console}

  1. In the [management console](https://console.yandex.cloud), open the folder containing the instance group in question.
  1. Navigate to **Compute Cloud**.
  1. In the left-hand panel, select ![image](../../../_assets/console-icons/layers-3-diagonal.svg) **Instance groups**.
  1. In the line with the instance group, click ![image](../../../_assets/console-icons/ellipsis.svg) and select **Stop group and VM**.
  1. In the window that opens, click **Stop**.

- CLI {#cli}

  If you do not have the Yandex Cloud CLI yet, [install and initialize it](../../../cli/quickstart.md#install).

  The folder used by default is the one specified when [creating](../../../cli/operations/profile/profile-create.md) the CLI profile. To change the default folder, use the `yc config set folder-id <folder_ID>` command. You can also specify a different folder for any command using `--folder-name` or `--folder-id`. If you access a resource by its name, the search will be limited to the default folder. If you access a resource by its ID, the search will be global, i.e., through all folders based on access permissions.

  1. See the description of the CLI command for stopping an instance group:

     ```bash
     yc compute instance-group stop --help
     ```

  1. Get a list of instance groups in the default folder:

     ```bash
     yc compute instance-group list
     ```
     
     Result:
     
     ```text
     +----------------------+----------------------+--------+------+
     |          ID          |          NAME        | STATUS | SIZE |
     +----------------------+----------------------+--------+------+
     | cl15b3mrkk88******** | first-instance-group | ACTIVE |    3 |
     +----------------------+----------------------+--------+------+
     ```

  1. Select `ID` or `NAME` of the group in question, e.g., `first-instance-group`.
  1. Stop the instance group in the default folder:

     ```bash
     yc compute instance-group stop first-instance-group
     ```

     Instance Groups will initiate stopping VM instances in the group. When all instances are stopped, the group will get the `STOPPED` status.

- API {#api}

  To stop an instance group, use the [stop](../../instancegroup/api-ref/InstanceGroup/stop.md) REST API method for the [InstanceGroup](../../instancegroup/api-ref/InstanceGroup/index.md) resource or the [InstanceGroupService/Stop](../../instancegroup/api-ref/grpc/InstanceGroup/stop.md) gRPC API call.

  To request a list of available instance groups, use the [listInstances](../../instancegroup/api-ref/InstanceGroup/listInstances.md) REST API method or the [InstanceGroupService/ListInstances](../../instancegroup/api-ref/grpc/InstanceGroup/listInstances.md) gRPC API call.

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