Deploy and Host Alby Hub on Railway

Alby Hub is a self-custodial, open source Lightning wallet service that lets you connect your own wallet or node to apps using Nostr Wallet Connect (NWC). It can run with an embedded Lightning node by default, or connect to external backends like LND, Phoenixd, Cashu, CLN, and Bark.

About Hosting Alby Hub

Alby Hub runs as a single containerized web service with persistent disk storage for wallet state, app data, and the default embedded SQLite database. If you use the built-in LDK node, persistent storage is required so channel and node data survive restarts. Alby Hub is designed to run continuously so it can stay connected to relays, receive payments, and serve connected apps at any time.

Common Use Cases

Run your own self-custodial Lightning wallet that stays online 24/7
Connect Nostr clients and Lightning apps to your wallet with Nostr Wallet Connect (NWC)
Receive payments through your own hosted Hub while keeping control of wallet data and backend choice

Dependencies for Alby Hub Hosting

The Railway template includes persistent storage for Alby Hub data

Deployment Dependencies

Alby Hub Website: https://albyhub.com/
Alby Hub GitHub Repository: https://github.com/getAlby/hub
Alby Hub Documentation: https://guides.getalby.com/user-guide/alby-hub

Implementation Details

This template can be deployed as a single service.

Recommended runtime setup:

Image: ghcr.io/getalby/hub:latest
Port: 8080
Persistent disk mount: /albyhub-data
Required environment variable: WORK_DIR=/albyhub-data/data/albyhub

Resource notes:

Embedded LDK node: recommended around 2 GB RAM and 1 GB disk
External node backends: can run with much lower memory usage

Why Deploy Alby Hub 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 Alby Hub 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.