Deploy and Host Audiobookshelf on Railway

Audiobookshelf is an open-source, self-hosted audiobook and podcast server. It streams audio, tracks listening progress for multiple users, manages libraries, fetches metadata and cover art, supports podcast downloads, and provides web, PWA, and mobile clients. This draft uses the immutable Audiobookshelf 2.36.0 container image.

About Hosting Audiobookshelf

Hosting Audiobookshelf requires one public HTTP container and durable storage for its configuration and metadata. This template uses the official GHCR image pinned to the Audiobookshelf 2.36.0 digest, exposes HTTP on port 80, and checks / for readiness. Railway supplies HTTPS through the generated service domain and restarts failed deployments up to ten times. The requested CONFIG_PATH, METADATA_PATH, and UID/GID defaults are safe literals. Audio and podcast library storage is intentionally not included in this contract; add and persist media storage according to the collection's size and backup needs.

Common Use Cases

Stream and organize a personal audiobook library.
Share multi-user audiobook and podcast listening with synchronized progress.
Run a self-hosted media server with metadata lookup, podcast downloads, and PWA/mobile access.

Dependencies for Audiobookshelf Hosting

The pinned public image ghcr.io/advplyr/audiobookshelf:2.36.0@sha256:180acad33d69c99ed208676465d8edcb268fa46967735579a7810859885b1a8e.
A Railway service domain targeting container port 80.
Persistent storage for Audiobookshelf configuration, metadata, and any media libraries added by the deployer.

Deployment Dependencies

Implementation Details

Service	Image and networking	Health and restart	Storage
`Audiobookshelf`	Official digest-pinned image; public HTTPS domain targeting port `80`	`/`; `ON_FAILURE` with 10 retries	Requested mounts `/home/node/config` and `/home/node/metadata`; Railway currently permits only one volume per service, so the draft requires manual reconciliation of this storage detail

The template variables are safe literals: PORT=80, CONFIG_PATH=/home/node/config, METADATA_PATH=/home/node/metadata, AUDIOBOOKSHELF_UID=1000, and AUDIOBOOKSHELF_GID=1000. See TEMPLATE.md for the draft audit, raw editor block, and the current one-volume platform limitation.

Why Deploy Audiobookshelf 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 Audiobookshelf 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.