Deploy Jitsi Meet | (Just Updated) Self-Hosted Video Calls, Users via Env Var

Deploy and Host Jitsi Meet on Railway

Jitsi Meet is a free, open-source video conferencing platform — no per-seat licence, no call-time limit, no account required for guests. This template deploys the full stack (web, Prosody XMPP, Jicofo, JVB) with authentication switched on, so only users you register can start a meeting.

About Hosting Jitsi Meet

Jitsi Meet normally needs four coordinated services talking to each other over internal XMPP: a web frontend, an XMPP server (Prosody), a conference focus component (Jicofo), and a media relay (JVB). This template wires all four together on Railway's private network and gives you one public URL for the web frontend.

Why Deploy Jitsi Meet on Railway

• Users are created from a single environment variable. Set PROSODY_USERS to user1:pass1,user2:pass2 and redeploy — Prosody registers (or re-registers) every account on boot. No admin console, no CLI login required to add a colleague.
• Authentication is on by default. Only registered users can start a meeting; anyone with the link can join as a guest once a meeting is live.
• No recurring per-seat fee. Jitsi Meet is Apache-2.0 licensed. You pay for compute, not for logins.
• Private internal networking. Prosody, Jicofo and JVB talk to each other over Railway's private network — only the web frontend is public.

Common Use Cases

• Internal team video calls without a Zoom/Meet seat-based bill
• Client-facing video calls behind your own domain
• A self-hosted fallback conferencing tool for a small team or community

Known limitation: UDP media relay

JVB's normal media path uses UDP port 10000. Railway's public networking is TCP-only, so JVB falls back to its TCP harvester for participants that cannot reach it directly. Call quality is unaffected for most networks; a small minority of very restrictive NATs may see reduced quality without a TURN server in front of it.

Dependencies for This Setup

Deployment Dependencies

• Jitsi Meet (jitsi/web, jitsi/prosody, jitsi/jicofo, jitsi/jvb) — Apache-2.0