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Deploy Postbase on Railway — tested and recommended. Two services, one required secret.

Published: March 31, 2026Updated: September 6, 2026

Postbase is a self-hosted auth and database platform for Next.js. Drop it into your stack, configure 25+ auth providers from a dashboard, and connect your app with a single SDK call. Think self-hosted Supabase or Clerk — you own the data, you control the infra.

About Hosting Postbase

On Railway, Postbase runs as two services: postbase (a slim Next.js-only app built from Dockerfile.railway) and Postgres (Railway’s managed database with a persistent volume). Splitting stateful and stateless services means git pushes only redeploy the app container — your data is untouched on every deploy. Railway builds Dockerfile.railway automatically per railway.toml; you link a Postgres service, set a couple of secrets, generate a public domain, and you’re live.

Common Use Cases

  • Add auth to a Next.js app — enable email/password, magic links, or any of 25+ OAuth providers (GitHub, Google, Discord, and more) from the dashboard without writing auth code

  • Self-host your user database — store users, sessions, and OAuth accounts in your own Postgres instance with full SQL access via the built-in editor

  • Manage files and storage — connect Amazon S3, Cloudflare R2, Backblaze B2, or any S3-compatible bucket per-project from the dashboard

Dependencies

  • Docker — Railway builds and runs Dockerfile.railway automatically per railway.toml

  • Railway Postgres service — a managed Postgres database, linked to the app via a variable reference

Implementation Details

Postbase runs two services on Railway:

  • postbase: Next.js dashboard + auth/database API, built from Dockerfile.railway, port 3000 (internal — Railway assigns the public port dynamically)

  • Postgres: Railway’s managed Postgres, linked to postbase via DATABASE_URL

On boot, docker/entrypoint-railway.sh waits for Postgres to accept connections, applies any pending SQL migrations from apps/web/drizzle/, then starts the Next.js server with HOSTNAME=0.0.0.0 (required — the standalone server binds to localhost by default, which Railway’s proxy can’t reach). Migration failures are logged but non-fatal, so /api/health can report a readable error instead of the deploy looping on a failed healthcheck.

Variables set via railway.toml (no manual entry needed):

NEXTAUTH_URL         = https://${{RAILWAY_PUBLIC_DOMAIN}}
NEXTAUTH_SECRET       = ${{AUTH_SECRET}}
POSTBASE_JWT_SECRET   = ${{AUTH_SECRET}}
DATABASE_URL          = ${{Postgres.DATABASE_URL}}

Minimum manual variable (Railway → postbase service → Variables):

AUTH_SECRET=changeme

Generate a strong value: openssl rand -base64 32

Make sure DATABASE_URL is a variable reference to the linked Postgres service (${{Postgres.DATABASE_URL}}), not a hardcoded connection string.

Why Deploy Postbase on Railway?

Railway is a singular platform to deploy your infrastructure stack — it hosts your infrastructure so you don’t have to deal with configuration, while letting you vertically and horizontally scale it. Deploying Postbase on Railway gets you one step closer to a complete full-stack application with minimal burden.