---
title: "Deploy Keycloak | (Just Updated) Auth0 Alternative With A Working Admin Login"
description: "Keycloak 26 SSO with an admin login that exists. Postgres, prebuilt, pinned"
category: "Authentication"
url: https://railway.com/deploy/keycloak-or-just-updated-auth0-alternati
---

# Deploy Keycloak | (Just Updated) Auth0 Alternative With A Working Admin Login

Keycloak 26 SSO with an admin login that exists. Postgres, prebuilt, pinned

**[Deploy Keycloak | (Just Updated) Auth0 Alternative With A Working Admin Login on Railway](https://railway.com/template/keycloak-or-just-updated-auth0-alternati)**

- **Creator:** SuperSlowSloth
- **Category:** Authentication

## Template content

### postgres

- **Image:** postgres:17.10-alpine

### keycloak

- **Image:** ghcr.io/bon5co/keycloak-railway:26.7.2
- **Health check:** /realms/master
- **Public domain:** Yes

## Documentation

# Deploy and Host Keycloak on Railway

Keycloak is the open-source identity and access management server behind
Red Hat SSO — an Auth0, Okta and Clerk alternative you run yourself. It gives
your applications OpenID Connect and SAML single sign-on, user registration and
login pages, multi-factor authentication, social and enterprise identity
brokering, LDAP and Active Directory federation, fine-grained authorization and
a full admin console and REST API.

This template deploys **Keycloak 26.7.2** with a PostgreSQL database, and — the
part that is easy to get wrong — an administrator account that actually exists
on the first boot.

## About Hosting Keycloak

Keycloak keeps every realm, client, user and credential in a relational
database, so a production deployment is the server plus PostgreSQL. It is a
Quarkus application: the stock container re-runs its build step on every start
unless the image was built ahead of time, and it needs to be told the public
hostname it is reached on, because every issuer URL, redirect URI and
back-channel URL it hands to your applications is derived from that value.

There is one further trap that is specific to Keycloak: **it has no HTTP setup
route.** The administrator account is created once, at the moment the master
realm is bootstrapped, from environment variables. If a deploy starts without
them, the server comes up completely healthy — it serves the OIDC discovery
document, it answers `/realms/master`, the platform reports a successful
deployment — and there is no page anywhere that lets you create the first
administrator. This template refuses to start without an administrator password
rather than handing you a running server you cannot administer, and it
generates one for you so there is nothing to fill in.

It also builds the Quarkus image ahead of time with the PostgreSQL driver,
health and metrics baked in, so the container starts optimized instead of
augmenting itself on every deploy, and it derives the public hostname and proxy
headers from the deployment itself.

## Why Deploy Keycloak 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 Keycloak 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.

Keycloak in particular is a natural fit: it is a long-running, memory-resident
server with a managed PostgreSQL beside it, both of which Railway provisions and
networks privately for you.

## Common Use Cases

- Single sign-on across your own web, mobile and API services with OpenID
  Connect or SAML.
- Replacing a paid identity provider (Auth0, Okta, Clerk) with a self-hosted one
  you control the data for.
- Adding social login (Google, GitHub, Apple, Discord) and multi-factor
  authentication without writing auth code.
- Federating an existing LDAP or Active Directory user store into modern
  applications.
- Issuing and validating JWTs for a microservice or agent fleet, with per-client
  scopes and roles.

## Dependencies for Keycloak

- A PostgreSQL database (deployed as part of this template).

### Deployment Dependencies

- [Keycloak documentation](https://www.keycloak.org/documentation)
- [Keycloak on GitHub](https://github.com/keycloak/keycloak)
- [Wrapper image source](https://github.com/bon5co/keycloak-railway)

## What this template does differently

- **An administrator account that exists.** The admin password is generated per
  deployment and the container refuses to boot without one. Keycloak offers no
  way to create the first administrator over HTTP, so a deploy that starts
  without credentials is a healthy server nobody can log into.
- **Keycloak 26.7.2, pinned.** Not a moving tag, and not a year-old release —
  this is an identity provider, and the version it runs on is a security
  property.
- **Prebuilt.** `kc.sh build` runs when the image is built, so your deploy
  starts `--optimized` instead of spending your build minutes augmenting the
  server on every deploy.
- **A healthcheck that reads the database.** `/realms/master` exercises the
  realm and its data store, rather than serving a static asset from disk.
- **Nothing to fill in.** Every value the deploy needs is generated or derived —
  the deploy form has no blank required fields.


## Similar templates

- [Keycloak](https://railway.com/deploy/mSwigX) — Keycloak template with keywind theme + apple and discord providers
- [lua-protector](https://railway.com/deploy/lua-protector) — Test deployed my project first
- [bknd](https://railway.com/deploy/p4nTYL) — Feature-rich yet lightweight backend

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