Name: 9Router
Availability: InStock
Author: Will

Deploy and Host 9Router with Railway

9Router is an open-source, self-hosted AI gateway: one OpenAI-compatible endpoint (/v1) in front of 60+ LLM providers - Claude, OpenAI, Gemini, DeepSeek, OpenRouter, Ollama, GitHub Copilot, Codex, Antigravity and more - with combos (fallback and round-robin across providers), quota tracking, token savers and a web dashboard. This template deploys the official 9Router image, digest-pinned, with a persistent volume and a deployment healthcheck. The dashboard password is generated for you: after deploying, open the 9Router service, go to Variables and copy INITIAL_PASSWORD. The login page still says "Default password is 123456" until you save a password of your own - ignore that line and use INITIAL_PASSWORD.

Plan requirements. 9Router is light: measured on this image, the container idles at about 85 MB and peaked at about 95 MB after five idle minutes and a burst of 60 concurrent /v1/models requests. It runs on every Railway plan, including Free (0.5 GB) and Trial (1 GB). Budget for the service plus whatever your LLM providers charge; the gateway itself adds cents per month.

About Hosting 9Router

9Router runs as a single Node.js service with a SQLite database under /app/data, which this template mounts on a Railway volume so providers, API keys, combos and usage history survive redeploys and restarts. Every secret (INITIAL_PASSWORD, JWT_SECRET, API_KEY_SECRET, MACHINE_ID_SALT) is generated at deploy time; nothing has to be typed into the deploy form. The image is pinned to a specific version and digest (decolua/9router:0.5.75), so a redeploy never picks up an untested upstream build. Railway probes /api/health before switching traffic, and the service restarts on failure.

Common Use Cases

One endpoint for every coding agent. Point Claude Code, Cursor, Cline, OpenCode, Codex or any OpenAI-compatible client at https://your-service.up.railway.app/v1 with one 9Router API key.
Fallback and round-robin across providers. Build a combo that tries your preferred provider first and fails over when it errors or hits a quota.
Use subscriptions you already pay for. Connect Claude Code, ChatGPT/Codex, GitHub Copilot or Gemini CLI accounts through OAuth and route requests through them.
A private gateway for your own apps. Reach it over Railway's private network as http://9router.railway.internal:20128 without exposing it.

Dependencies for 9Router Hosting

None. One service, one volume. Provider credentials are added in the dashboard after deploying.

Deployment Dependencies

Implementation Details

Deploying. Click deploy; there are no inputs. The deployment goes green once /api/health answers (about 10-40 seconds), then open the service URL.

Logging in. Open the service URL, which redirects to /login. The password is INITIAL_PASSWORD from the 9Router service's Variables tab. Disregard the "Default password is 123456" hint - it only checks whether a password has been saved in the dashboard, not whether one was set through the environment. Then set your own password under Profile in the dashboard: leave the current password field empty the first time (the upstream form accepts only an empty value or 123456 there before a password has been saved). Once saved, the dashboard password lives in the database and INITIAL_PASSWORD is no longer used.

API keys. /v1/* always requires a 9Router API key on a remote deployment - requests without one get 401 API key required for remote API access. Create keys in the dashboard under Endpoint (or POST /api/keys) and pass them as Authorization: Bearer sk-....

Connecting providers. Dashboard → Providers. API-key providers (OpenRouter, OpenAI, Anthropic, DeepSeek, ...) take a key and are ready immediately. OAuth providers (Claude Code, Codex, Antigravity, GitHub Copilot, Gemini CLI, ...) open the vendor's consent page. Known upstream issue on any reverse-proxied deployment (decolua/9router#4054): some OAuth flows send the browser back to http://localhost:443/callback?... instead of your Railway domain. The code is still valid - replace http://localhost:443 in the address bar with https://your-service.up.railway.app and press Enter to finish the connection.

Coding agents. Claude Code:

export ANTHROPIC_BASE_URL="https://your-service.up.railway.app"
export ANTHROPIC_AUTH_TOKEN="sk-your-9router-api-key"

Any OpenAI-compatible client uses https://your-service.up.railway.app/v1 with the same key. GET /v1/models lists the models available from your connected providers.

Persistence and redeploys. /app/data is a Railway volume: db/data.sqlite, automatic backups under db/backups/, certificates and the model catalog all live there. Verified on this template: API keys and provider connections created before a redeploy are present after it, and a dashboard session stays valid across redeploys because JWT_SECRET is stable. Because a volume can only be attached to one container at a time, a redeploy has a few seconds of downtime (measured 1 failed probe out of 150 at one-second intervals); in-flight streaming responses are cut at that moment.

Optional variables. CLOUD_URL is only used if you enable Cloud Sync. ENABLE_REQUEST_LOGS=true writes per-request logs to /app/logs, which is not on the volume and grows without bound - leave it off unless you are debugging. HEADROOM_URL and SEARXNG_URL point at optional sidecar services (a Headroom token-saver or a SearXNG instance) if you add them to the project; use their private *.railway.internal addresses.

Upgrades. The image is pinned by digest. To move to a newer 9Router, change the service's source image to the new tag (check the changelog and open issues first - upstream has shipped versions where the dashboard broke, and latest has moved eight times in six weeks), then redeploy. Data on the volume is preserved; take a copy of db/data.sqlite first if you want a rollback point.

Security notes. The dashboard requires a login and the LLM API requires a key on every request from outside the container. The session cookie is marked Secure (AUTH_COOKIE_SECURE=true). API_KEY_SECRET and MACHINE_ID_SALT are generated so keys and machine identity cannot be derived from upstream's public defaults. Railway's platform terms apply to how you use the gateway; run it for your own accounts and keys.

Why Deploy 9Router on Railway?

Railway is a singular platform to deploy your infrastructure stack. Railway will host your infrastructure so you don't have to deal with configuration, while allowing you to vertically and horizontally scale it.

By deploying 9Router on Railway, you are one step closer to supporting a complete full-stack application with minimal burden. Host your servers, databases, AI agents, and more on Railway.