Deploy and Host self hosted Hoppscotch Teams (Team Workspaces and Access Control) on Railway

This template runs Hoppscotch on Railway so your team can share API collections inside workspaces you control.

About Hosting Hoppscotch Teams open-source software on Railway (self hosted Hoppscotch workspaces, roles and self-hosted user management template)

Hoppscotch is MIT-licensed, so the code is yours to run, and this template keeps workspaces, collections, environments and user records on your own Postgres service.

Why Deploy Hoppscotch Teams, the Postman alternative on Railway (Railway Free Trial)

Postman keeps shared collections in its own cloud and charges per seat for team workspaces, so your requests live on someone else's servers.

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 Hoppscotch Teams 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.

Railway vs Other Hosting Providers and VPS for Hoppscotch Teams self hosting

Hoppscotch Teams needs Postgres and a stateless web container, and your host decides how much of that you run yourself.

Provider	What You Get with Railway	What You Get with the Other Provider
DigitalOcean	Both services from one template, with HTTPS and the Postgres volume managed.	A Droplet you patch, firewall and back up, plus your own Docker and proxy.
AWS	One project with services wired together and env vars set in the dashboard.	Full networking control, but VPC, RDS and certificates to build before the first invite.
Hetzner	Deploys and restarts from the dashboard, with no SSH needed for migrations.	Cheap servers, but OS, Docker, Postgres and TLS are yours to run.

If you already run VPS infrastructure and like managing it, the other providers give more control, but Railway gets shared collections working faster.

Common Use Cases for hosted Hoppscotch Teams

Onboarding a backend engineer: Invite them by work email and set their role to Editor on the team workspace, so they can edit the shared collections and environments right away.
Giving QA read-only access: Add QA members as Viewers on the workspace holding staging requests. They can run everything but can't change a URL or delete a request mid-test.
Separating scratch work from team work: Keep experiments in your Personal Workspace and move anything the team relies on into a team workspace. The workspace switcher flips between them.
Granting admin rights to a platform lead: Promote them from the Users section of the /admin dashboard on your self-hosted instance. They can manage accounts and invites without access to the Railway project.
Revoking a pending invite: If a contractor leaves before accepting, open Pending Invites in /admin and click "Revoke Invitation" in the Action column. The link stops working immediately.

Dependencies for Hoppscotch Teams Docker hosted on Railway

This template runs two services: the Hoppscotch application and a private Postgres database. Back up the Postgres volume, because losing it means losing your team's workspaces.

Deployment Dependencies for Managed Hoppscotch Teams Service (API Client)

The application uses the hoppscotch/hoppscotch:2026.9.0 All-in-One image, which bundles Caddy on port 80 and the backend on an internal PORT of 8080.

Implementation Details for Hoppscotch Teams (Using Hoppscotch official docker image)

Set DATABASE_URL from the Postgres service and generate DATA_ENCRYPTION_KEY as exactly 32 characters.

How does Hoppscotch Teams compare against other ways to share API collections and manage API client access across a team

Hoppscotch Teams vs Postman (Postman Alternative)

Hosting: Hoppscotch Teams runs on your own Railway project, so collections and the user list stay in your Postgres database. Postman keeps team collections in its cloud.
Licensing: Hoppscotch is MIT-licensed. Postman is closed source.
Where Postman wins: It has a larger ecosystem, more integrations and a mature mock server. Hoppscotch will feel sparse if your team already lives in Postman.

Hoppscotch Teams vs Insomnia (Insomnia Alternative)

Sync model: Insomnia's team sharing runs through Kong's cloud sync and paid plans. Hoppscotch Teams keeps the sharing server on infrastructure you control.
Admin control: The /admin dashboard on a self-hosted instance lets you invite users and revoke pending invites yourself.
Where Insomnia wins: It has a polished desktop app and solid plugin support, and needs no server at all.

Hoppscotch Teams vs Bruno (Bruno Alternative)

Collaboration: Bruno stores collections as plain files you commit to git. Hoppscotch Teams uses a shared server workspace, so members see the same collections without a git workflow.
Access control: Bruno relies on repository permissions. Hoppscotch Teams adds explicit owner, editor and viewer roles inside the workspace.
Where Bruno wins: It works offline, keeps collections in version control and needs no backend. It suits teams that review API specs in pull requests.

Hoppscotch Teams vs Thunder Client (Thunder Client Alternative)

Scope: Thunder Client is a VS Code extension. Hoppscotch Teams is browser-based, which suits teams spread across several editors or QA staff who never open an IDE.
Sharing: Thunder Client's collaboration features are tied to the extension, and some are paid. Hoppscotch Teams gives workspace-level sharing with roles on your own instance.
Where Thunder Client wins: It is lightweight and sits where developers already work, so a small editor-centric team gets set up faster.

How to use Hoppscotch Teams (the OSS API development platform)?

Sign in at https://your-domain/admin with a configured provider (GitHub, Google, Microsoft or SMTP magic link); the first account to sign in becomes instance admin.
Click the "+" icon at the top right of the workspace switcher, or use "Create new workspace" on the Profile page under Workspaces; you become the owner.
Click "Invite" and enter one or more email addresses in the input field.
In workspace settings, use the "Role" drop-down on each member to pick Owner, Editor or Viewer, then click "Save".
In /admin, open Users, click "Invite User" and review "Pending Invites"; use "Revoke Invitation" in the Action column to cancel one.
For scripted user lookups, create an infra token under Settings Infra Tokens and call the users endpoint:

curl -H "Authorization: Bearer " https://your-domain/backend/v1/infra/users

How to self host Hoppscotch Teams on other VPS Services (Hoppscotch self hosting guide)

Off Railway you run the same stack yourself: the Hoppscotch container, Postgres, and HTTPS in front for OAuth.

Clone the Repository

git clone https://github.com/hoppscotch/hoppscotch.git
cd hoppscotch
cp .env.example .env

Install Dependencies

You only need Docker and a Postgres database. Start Postgres however you prefer and note its connection string.

Configure Environment Variables

Set the database URL, encryption key, and public URLs in .env. Keep DATA_ENCRYPTION_KEY at exactly 32 characters and never change it after first boot.

DATABASE_URL=postgresql://user:password@db-host:5432/hoppscotch
DATA_ENCRYPTION_KEY=replace-with-exactly-32-characters
VITE_BASE_URL=https://your-domain
VITE_ADMIN_URL=https://your-domain/admin

Start the Hoppscotch Teams Application

Run the official image, then apply migrations inside the container. Put HTTPS in front before you configure OAuth.

docker run -d --env-file .env -p 3000:80 hoppscotch/hoppscotch:2026.9.0
docker exec -it your-container pnpm exec prisma migrate deploy

Railway handles the database, HTTPS endpoint, and migrations for you on every deploy.

Official Pricing of Hoppscotch Teams (Hoppscotch pricing)

Hoppscotch is MIT-licensed, so the Community Edition you deploy on Railway is free to run, and you only pay for the infrastructure underneath it.

Hoppscotch Teams cloud vs self hosted comparison (Pricing, features, costs, and more)

Hoppscotch Cloud keeps workspaces, roles and user records on Hoppscotch's servers, while a self-hosted instance keeps them on yours.

Monthly cost of self hosting Hoppscotch Teams on Railway

Railway bills by usage, and a light team instance with the Hoppscotch app and Postgres typically lands around $5-10 per month. That is an estimate for light use, not a quote.

System Requirements for Hosting Hoppscotch Teams on a VPS

The container idles at about 0.5 GB of RAM, since it runs Caddy, the NestJS backend and the desktop bundle server together.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

What can an Editor do that a Viewer cannot?

An Editor can create, edit and delete collections, environments and requests in the team workspace, while a Viewer only gets read-only access.

Can I use GraphQL in a team workspace?

Not really.

Do invites need SMTP to work?

Invites are much smoother with SMTP, since the invitee gets an email link.

Can an owner leave their workspace?

Not directly. An owner has to transfer ownership to another member or delete the workspace before leaving.

Why do my changes disappear after a Railway redeploy?

They shouldn't, because the container is stateless and your workspace and user data live in the Postgres service.

Does changing DATA_ENCRYPTION_KEY break existing workspaces?

Yes, you should treat it as permanent. That key encrypts secrets stored in the database, so set it once on first boot and never change it afterward.