diff --git a/CHANGELOG.md b/CHANGELOG.md
index 1ed4634415..5f53980dee 100644
--- a/CHANGELOG.md
+++ b/CHANGELOG.md
@@ -24,6 +24,7 @@ This project adheres to [Semantic Versioning](https://semver.org/).
 - [#3646](https://github.com/plotly/dash/pull/3646) Remove React 16 support (`16.14.0` is no longer an accepted value for `REACT_VERSION` / `_set_react_version`).
 
 ### Changed
+- [#4073](https://github.com/plotly/dash/pull/4073) Move `plotly-cloud` back to the optional `dash[cloud]` extra (it was a default dependency in 4.5.0rc0/rc1), since it is not available on conda-forge.
 - [#4026](https://github.com/plotly/dash/pull/4026) Log a warning, once per process, when a streaming request is refused because its stream token failed verification, which on multi-worker deployments usually means the workers do not share a signing secret.
 - [#3987](https://github.com/plotly/dash/pull/3987) Forward FastAPI reload scope options (`reload_dirs`, `reload_excludes`, and `reload_includes`) to Uvicorn when reloading.
 - [#3986](https://github.com/plotly/dash/pull/3986) Adjust `_run_before_hooks` in the `fastapi` backend to honor a response returned by a `before_request` function, matching the `flask` backend's behavior.
diff --git a/dash/_plotly_cli.py b/dash/_plotly_cli.py
index 4456962746..9974cd23b9 100644
--- a/dash/_plotly_cli.py
+++ b/dash/_plotly_cli.py
@@ -9,8 +9,7 @@ def cli():
     except ImportError:
         print(
             "Plotly cloud is not installed,"
-            " install it with `pip install plotly-cloud` (or reinstall dash)"
-            " to use the plotly command",
+            " install it with `pip install dash[cloud]` to use the plotly command",
             file=sys.stderr,
         )
         sys.exit(-1)
diff --git a/requirements/install.txt b/requirements/install.txt
index 71e0dafb32..795f0c85c8 100644
--- a/requirements/install.txt
+++ b/requirements/install.txt
@@ -1,7 +1,6 @@
 Flask>=1.0.4,<3.2
 Werkzeug<3.2
 plotly>=5.0.0
-plotly-cloud
 importlib-metadata
 typing_extensions>=4.1.1
 requests
diff --git a/tests/integration/devtools/test_callback_validation.py b/tests/integration/devtools/test_callback_validation.py
index e4f89432d5..33a5ad485d 100644
--- a/tests/integration/devtools/test_callback_validation.py
+++ b/tests/integration/devtools/test_callback_validation.py
@@ -33,7 +33,7 @@ def check_errors(dash_duo, specs):
     found = []
     for i in range(cnt):
         msg = dash_duo.find_elements(".dash-fe-error__title")[i].text
-        # plotly-cloud (a default install dep) injects a `_plotly-cloud-*`
+        # plotly-cloud (installed with dash[cloud]) injects a `_plotly-cloud-*`
         # component into every layout via a dash_hooks entry point, so it
         # shows up in the "string ids in the current layout" list. Strip it
         # so these assertions hold whether or not plotly-cloud is installed.
diff --git a/tests/unit/test_plotly_cli.py b/tests/unit/test_plotly_cli.py
new file mode 100644
index 0000000000..9cbe34021e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/tests/unit/test_plotly_cli.py
@@ -0,0 +1,24 @@
+import sys
+from pathlib import Path
+
+import pytest
+
+from dash._plotly_cli import cli
+
+
+def test_plotly_cli_hints_cloud_extra_when_missing(monkeypatch, capsys):
+    # A None entry in sys.modules makes the import raise ImportError.
+    monkeypatch.setitem(sys.modules, "plotly_cloud", None)
+    monkeypatch.setitem(sys.modules, "plotly_cloud.cli", None)
+
+    with pytest.raises(SystemExit) as exc:
+        cli()
+
+    assert exc.value.code == -1
+    assert "pip install dash[cloud]" in capsys.readouterr().err
+
+
+def test_plotly_cloud_is_not_an_install_requirement():
+    install = Path(__file__).parents[2] / "requirements" / "install.txt"
+    required = install.read_text(encoding="utf-8").lower().split()
+    assert "plotly-cloud" not in required