How to Generate SSH Key in Hostinger, Get Format of SSH Key, 2026 Easily

Log in to Hostinger and open hPanel for the site you want SSH access to. The website selector sits at the top of the left sidebar, and the dashboard below it lists Overview, WordPress, Hosting Plan, Performance, Analytics, Security, Domains, Website, Files and Databases.

SSH isn't on that first screen; it lives further down the same sidebar under Advanced, so scroll the menu instead of hunting through the dashboard tiles. SSH access is a hosting feature, not a domain one.

If you manage several sites on the account, make sure the selector at the top shows the right one before you add a key, since keys are stored per hosting plan. Hostinger requires Premium or above for SSH; the entry-level Single plan doesn't include it, and if the Advanced menu has no SSH Access entry, that's usually why.

Hostinger stores keys, it doesn't create them, so this step happens in your own terminal. On macOS or Linux, run ssh-keygen -t ed25519 -C "your@email.com" and press Enter to accept the default location, which puts the private key at ~/.ssh/id_ed25519 and the public key at ~/.ssh/id_ed25519.pub.

If you need compatibility with older tooling, use ssh-keygen -t rsa -b 4096 instead. Set a passphrase when prompted.

It encrypts the private key on disk, so a stolen laptop doesn't hand over your server. On Windows you can run the same command in PowerShell or Windows Terminal, or use PuTTYgen: click Generate and move the mouse to build entropy before saving both halves.

This is the format question that trips people up. A public key is a single line of text with three space-separated parts: the algorithm, the encoded key, and an optional comment, for example ssh-rsa AAAAB3NzaC1yc2EAAAADAQABAAAB... followed by your email.

An ed25519 key looks the same but starts with ssh-ed25519 and is much shorter. Two things it is never.

It isn't the file that begins with -----BEGIN OPENSSH PRIVATE KEY----- (that's the private half, which stays on your machine), and it isn't PuTTYgen's saved .ppk file. If you generated in PuTTYgen, copy the key from the box labelled "Public key for pasting into OpenSSH authorized_keys file" at the top of the window instead of exporting a file; that box is already in the right format. Read the .pub file with cat ~/.ssh/id_ed25519.pub on macOS or Linux and copy the whole line, including the ssh- prefix, with no line breaks.

Back in hPanel, scroll the sidebar past DNS Zone Editor, PHP Configuration and Cron Jobs to SSH Access. If the SSH status on that page shows as disabled, click Enable first; the Add SSH key button won't do anything useful until SSH access itself is switched on for the plan.

Once enabled, the page shows your connection details, a download link for the PuTTY client on Windows, a section for managing stored keys, and a troubleshooting block covering common SSH errors. Click Add SSH key and a dialog headed "Add SSH key" opens with two fields: a Name and a large SSH public key box. The Name is only a label for you, so use something that identifies the machine the private key lives on, such as "work-laptop" or "deploy-server", because when you retire a device later you want to know which stored key to delete without guessing.

Paste the contents of your .pub file into the SSH public key box. It should land as one continuous line starting with ssh-rsa or ssh-ed25519 followed by the long encoded string.

If it arrives broken across several lines, the copy picked up hard wrapping and hPanel will likely reject it, so recopy straight from the file instead of a rendered web page or chat message. Click Add Record and the key is stored against the hosting plan, active immediately with no restart or waiting period.

The page then lists it by the name you gave it, and you can add several keys to the same plan when more than one machine needs access. That's far better practice than copying one private key onto multiple computers.

The SSH Access page shows the three things you need to log in: the hostname or server IP, the SSH username for the plan, and the port, which on Hostinger shared hosting is a non-standard number, not the usual 22. Read it off the page instead of assuming.

From a terminal, the command is ssh -p PORT username@host, and if your key sits in the default ~/.ssh location it's offered automatically; otherwise point at it with -i /path/to/private_key. In PuTTY, put the host and port on the Session screen and load the .ppk private key under Connection, SSH, Auth before you connect. A successful login lands you in your account's home directory with no password prompt, only the key passphrase if you set one.

The public key you just pasted is safe to share. The private key is the credential and should never be emailed, committed to a repository, or pasted into a support chat.

On macOS and Linux the private key file should be readable only by you (chmod 600 ~/.ssh/id_ed25519), and SSH refuses to use it if the permissions are looser. Use ssh-agent, or macOS Keychain, so you type the passphrase once per session instead of being tempted to skip it.

When a laptop is lost or someone leaves the team, the fix is quick: delete that named key from the SSH Access page in hPanel and its access disappears, while every other machine keeps working. That per-device separation is the whole reason for naming keys carefully in the first place.