Deploy and Host

Deploy a production-ready FastAPI backend with MongoDB on Railway in one click. The template provisions two services — a Docker-built FastAPI application and a MongoDB database — wired together automatically, with JWT authentication, user management, and a demo CRUD resource (items) working out of the box.

About Hosting

Hosting this template gives you:

backend — the FastAPI app, built from the repo's Dockerfile (Python 3.14 + uv), binding to Railway's dynamic $PORT, with a healthcheck on /health and an automatic restart policy on failure. It is deployed from the GitHub repo, so it stays updatable.
MongoDB — Railway's MongoDB database plugin with a persistent volume at /data/db. The backend reads its connection string from MONGO_URL, which is pre-wired to ${{MongoDB.MONGO_URL}}.

The deploy form prompts you for:

Service	Variable	What to enter
MongoDB	`MONGOPORT`	`27017`
MongoDB	`MONGO_INITDB_ROOT_USERNAME`	`mongo`
backend	`PROJECT_NAME`	your project name (shown in the OpenAPI docs)
backend	`SECRET_KEY`	a strong random secret (`openssl rand -hex 32`)
backend	`FIRST_SUPERUSER`	the admin email to seed
backend	`FIRST_SUPERUSER_PASSWORD`	a strong password for the admin

The MongoDB root password is generated fresh per deployment. Everything else is wired automatically, and the backend gets a public Railway domain on deploy.

MongoDB is schemaless, so there are no migrations to run: on every deploy the container start command creates the indexes (unique email on users, owner_id/created_at on items) and seeds the first superuser from the environment variables — this happens inside the container start (Dockerfile CMD and railway.json startCommand are identical), so it works on every Railway deploy path.

After the first deploy, optionally set FRONTEND_HOST on the backend service to your API's public domain (used for CORS origins and links in outgoing emails).

Why Deploy

Zero migration management — MongoDB needs no schema migrations; index creation and superuser seeding are idempotent and run at boot.
Production-shaped auth out of the box — OAuth2 password flow with JWT access tokens, Argon2 password hashing (with transparent bcrypt → argon2 upgrades), and role-based admin endpoints.
One domain, one service — a pure backend API: no frontend build step, no static asset hosting, no CORS-bound SPA to configure.
Railway-native — dynamic $PORT binding, /health healthcheck path, Dockerfile builder, and config-as-code via railway.json for GitHub-triggered deploys.

Common Use Cases

REST API backends for mobile and web apps that need authentication and user management on day one.
Internal tools and admin APIs backed by MongoDB documents (users + items CRUD as the pattern to copy).
A clean, official-template-based starting point for FastAPI teams that prefer MongoDB over SQL databases.
Rapid prototyping of JWT-authenticated APIs with OpenAPI docs (/docs) generated automatically.

Dependencies for

The deployed stack consists of the FastAPI backend service and the MongoDB database it persists to.

Deployment Dependencies

MongoDB — provisioned by the template; the backend connects using MONGO_URL (${{MongoDB.MONGO_URL}}). No other infrastructure is required.
Environment variables on backend — PROJECT_NAME, SECRET_KEY, FIRST_SUPERUSER, FIRST_SUPERUSER_PASSWORD (the deploy form prompts for all four; enter strong values for production use).
Python 3.14 + uv — baked into the Docker image; no host toolchain needed.