Deploy and Host ERPNext on Railway

ERPNext is open-source ERP software built on the Frappe framework. It covers accounting, invoicing, inventory, sales and purchasing, manufacturing, projects, assets, CRM and HR in one system, with a web interface, a REST API and support for many countries' taxes and charts of accounts. It is a common alternative to Odoo, SAP Business One and NetSuite. ERPNext v16 also includes an MCP server, so Claude and other AI agents can work with your ERP data under a normal user login.

About Hosting ERPNext

ERPNext runs several processes: a gunicorn web server, a socket.io realtime server, background workers, a scheduler and nginx. It stores data in MariaDB and uses Redis for cache and job queues. The site, with its database and Administrator account, must be created with bench new-site before anyone can log in, and every upgrade needs bench migrate. Frappe's compose files share one volume between all processes, which Railway doesn't allow.

This template runs Frappe's official ERPNext v16 image with MariaDB 11.8 and two Redis instances on Railway's private network. The web, realtime, worker, scheduler and nginx processes run in one service with the site volume. The site is created on first start with a generated Administrator password.

Common Use Cases

Accounting, invoicing and payments for a small or mid-size company
Inventory, warehouses, purchasing and sales orders for distribution and retail
Manufacturing with bills of materials, work orders and production planning
Projects, timesheets and billing for service companies
Letting Claude or another AI agent look up invoices, stock and orders, or draft documents, through ERPNext's MCP server
A self-hosted Odoo or NetSuite replacement with your data in your own database

Dependencies for ERPNext Hosting

MariaDB 11.8
Redis 8 (cache)
Redis 8 (job queue and realtime events)

Deployment Dependencies

ERPNext: https://github.com/frappe/erpnext
Frappe Docker: https://github.com/frappe/frappe_docker
Documentation: https://docs.frappe.io/erpnext
Image: https://hub.docker.com/r/frappe/erpnext

Implementation Details

What you set: nothing. The Administrator password and all database and Redis passwords are generated.

After deploy:

Wait 3 to 6 minutes for the first start; the ERPNext logs show erpnext-setup: site created when it is ready.
Open the ERPNext URL and log in as Administrator with the ADMIN_PASSWORD variable of the ERPNext service.
Complete the setup wizard: country, currency, company and fiscal year.
Add users and roles, and set up an email account to send invoices.
To connect Claude: create a user with limited roles for the agent, then in claude.ai add a custom connector with the URL https://<your-url>/api/v2/mcp and log in as that user. For Claude Code, generate an API key for the user and pass it as Authorization: token <key>:<secret>.

This template:

Uses Frappe's official frappe/erpnext v16.54.0 image and MariaDB 11.8.9 with the utf8mb4 settings Frappe requires
Creates the site and installs ERPNext on first start, with a generated Administrator password; later starts skip it
Runs bench migrate automatically when you change the image version
Runs web, realtime, background worker, scheduler and nginx in one service, with site files and attachments on a volume
Enables the scheduler, so emails, recurring documents and auto-repeat work
Keeps MariaDB and both Redis instances private, with generated passwords
Stores MariaDB data and the job queue on volumes
Serves ERPNext's built-in MCP server at /api/v2/mcp on the same domain, behind ERPNext login (OAuth or API key)
Checks health on /api/method/ping

Notes: connect agents as a user with limited roles, never as Administrator. Set HOST_NAME to your custom domain if you add one, so emails and links use it. Changing ADMIN_PASSWORD after the first deploy has no effect; change the password in ERPNext. Back up from Backups in ERPNext before upgrading.

Why Deploy ERPNext 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 ERPNext 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.