Deploy and Host Kafka Stack on Railway

Kafka Stack deploys a ready-to-use single-node Apache Kafka broker in modern KRaft mode together with Kafbat UI. Get a full event-streaming environment with a browser-based management interface in one click — no ZooKeeper required.

About Hosting Kafka Stack

This template deploys two services: a single-node Kafka broker running in combined broker/controller KRaft mode, and Kafbat UI for easy cluster management. The UI comes with basic authentication and is pre-connected to the Kafka service. Kafka runs without a persistent volume (data is ephemeral and resets on redeploy), while the UI configuration is persisted. After deploy, open the UI, log in with the default credentials, and start creating topics or inspecting messages immediately. Ideal for development, testing, prototypes, and small internal workloads that need a lightweight event-streaming setup without operational overhead.

Default UI Credentials

Username: kafka
Password: Auto-generated 16-character secret (visible in the Variables tab after deploy)

Common Use Cases

Rapid local-style Kafka development and testing in the cloud
Prototyping event-driven applications and microservices
Staging environments that need a simple message broker
Learning Kafka with a visual UI instead of pure CLI tools

Dependencies for Kafka Stack Hosting

None beyond this template (Kafka + UI are included)
Optional: your application services that produce/consume messages

Deployment Dependencies

Apache Kafka: https://kafka.apache.org/
Kafbat UI: https://github.com/kafbat/kafka-ui
Kafbat UI Docs: https://ui.docs.kafbat.io/
Railway Templates: https://docs.railway.com/templates

Implementation Details

Services

Service	Image	Volume	Port
Kafka	`apache/kafka:latest`	❌ None	9092 (private)
Kafbat UI	`ghcr.io/kafbat/kafka-ui:latest`	`/etc/kafkaui`	8080 (public)

Kafka (KRaft) key settings

KAFKA_NODE_ID=1
KAFKA_PROCESS_ROLES=broker,controller
CLUSTER_ID=MkU3OEVBNTcwNTJENDM2Qk
KAFKA_LISTENERS=PLAINTEXT://0.0.0.0:9092,CONTROLLER://0.0.0.0:9093
KAFKA_ADVERTISED_LISTENERS=PLAINTEXT://${{RAILWAY_PRIVATE_DOMAIN}}:9092
KAFKA_CONTROLLER_QUORUM_VOTERS=1@${{RAILWAY_PRIVATE_DOMAIN}}:9093
KAFKA_OFFSETS_TOPIC_REPLICATION_FACTOR=1
KAFKA_AUTO_CREATE_TOPICS_ENABLE=true
KAFKA_LOG_DIRS=/tmp/kraft-combined-logs

Kafbat UI key settings

SERVER_PORT=8080
AUTH_TYPE=LOGIN_FORM
SPRING_SECURITY_USER_NAME=kafka
SPRING_SECURITY_USER_PASSWORD=${{secret(16)}}
DYNAMIC_CONFIG_ENABLED=true
KAFKA_CLUSTERS_0_NAME=local
KAFKA_CLUSTERS_0_BOOTSTRAPSERVERS=${{Kafka.RAILWAY_PRIVATE_DOMAIN}}:9092

Why choose this template?

Feature	This Template (Kafka Stack)	Manual setup / Other templates
No ZooKeeper (pure KRaft)	✅	❌ Often still uses ZK
Kafka + UI in one click	✅	❌ Separate deploys needed
Pre-connected UI to Kafka	✅	❌ Manual bootstrap config
Basic Auth enabled by default	✅	❌ Extra setup
UI config persisted	✅	❌ Easy to lose settings
Auto-generated secure password	✅	❌ Hardcoded or missing
Lightweight single-node design	✅	❌ Over-complex multi-node
Kafka data persisted by default	❌ (ephemeral)	✅ Some templates include it

Note: Kafka data is ephemeral (no volume) to avoid permission issues with the official image on Railway. Suitable for dev/staging. For persistent Kafka data, consider switching to bitnami/kafka later.

Why Deploy Kafka Stack 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 Kafka Stack 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.