Deploy and Host Calibre-Web on Railway

Calibre-Web is an open-source web app for browsing, reading and downloading e-books from a Calibre library. It shows your books with covers and metadata, has an in-browser reader for EPUB, PDF and comics, and supports multiple users, shelves, uploads, metadata editing, OPDS feeds and Kobo sync.

About Hosting Calibre-Web

Calibre-Web is a single Python web service that keeps its settings in a SQLite file (app.db) and reads books from a Calibre library folder with its own metadata.db. Hosting it means running one container, keeping both the settings and the library on persistent storage, and putting it behind HTTPS. This template runs the LinuxServer.io image pinned to Calibre-Web 0.6.27, with one volume on /config. On the first start it creates an empty Calibre library in /config/library, turns on uploads, and replaces the well-known default admin password (admin123) with a generated one. Public sign-up and anonymous browsing stay off.

Common Use Cases

Read your e-book collection in any browser, from any device
Share a family or team library with separate user accounts and shelves
Serve books to e-reader apps over OPDS, or sync them to Kobo devices

Dependencies for Calibre-Web Hosting

A persistent volume for the settings database and the Calibre library
A Calibre library (metadata.db); the template creates an empty one on first start

Deployment Dependencies

Implementation Details

Log in as admin with the password in the service's ADMIN_PASSWORD variable. If you change that variable later, the next deploy sets it as the admin password again. A password changed in the web UI stays as it is until then. The password must have at least 8 characters with an upper-case letter, a lower-case letter, a digit and a special character, or the deploy stops with a clear error instead of starting with a weak password.

Upload books with the Upload button. They are stored in /config/library on the volume. To use an existing Calibre library, copy its folder (including metadata.db) onto the volume and point Admin → Edit Calibre Database Configuration at it.

The image is linuxserver/calibre-web:0.6.27-ls409, pinned by digest. E-book conversion (the optional universal-calibre mod) is not included.

Why Deploy Calibre-Web 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 Calibre-Web 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.