How do I deploy LocalAI on Railway?

You can deploy LocalAI on Railway by clicking the "Deploy Now" button on this page. Railway will automatically set up all the necessary services and configurations for you.

What are the system requirements?

Railway handles all the infrastructure requirements. You only need a web browser to deploy and manage your application.

Is this template free to use?

Yes, this template is free to use within your existing Railway account.

Can I customize this template?

Yes, you can fully customize this template. After deployment, you will have full control of what you've deployed in your Railway project.

How do I get support for this template?

You can get support through our community forum: local-ai-91a31f75, or click "Get template help" for this template for more assistance.

Deploy and Host LocalAI on Railway

LocalAI is an open source, OpenAI-compatible API that allows you to run large language models, embeddings, image generation, and audio processing locally or on your own infrastructure. It acts as a drop-in replacement for OpenAI APIs while supporting multiple model families without requiring specialised hardware.

About Hosting LocalAI

Hosting LocalAI on Railway enables you to run a fully self-managed AI backend without dealing with infrastructure complexity. Railway handles deployment, networking, and scaling, while LocalAI provides the inference layer for models such as LLMs, embedding models, and multimodal systems. With persistent storage configured, you can cache models, store generated outputs, and maintain configuration across deployments. This setup is ideal for building production-ready AI applications that require full control over data, cost, and performance.

Common Use Cases

Self-hosted OpenAI-compatible API for apps and agents
Embeddings generation for vector search and RAG pipelines
Running private LLMs, image generation, or speech models without external APIs

Dependencies for LocalAI Hosting

Railway account
Docker-based deployment (LocalAI container image)

Deployment Dependencies

Implementation Details

Check out the ENV variables here -> https://localai.io/reference/cli-reference/

Volume Configuration (required for persistence)

Mount a Railway volume to:

/data

Recommended Environment Variables

API_KEY=your-secure-key

MODELS_PATH=/data/models
LOCALAI_MODELS_PATH=/data/models

LOCALAI_BACKENDS_PATH=/data/backends
LOCALAI_CONFIG_DIR=/data/config

GENERATED_CONTENT_PATH=/data/generated
UPLOAD_PATH=/data/uploads

Notes

Only /data is persistent on Railway, so all paths should point inside it
Models and downloaded backends will persist across deployments
Without a volume, models will be re-downloaded on every restart
API_KEY protects both API and Web UI access

Why Deploy LocalAI 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 LocalAI 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.