---
title: "Deploy Medusa.js"
description: "Open-source commerce backend for building your own online store"
category: "Other"
url: https://railway.com/deploy/medusajs
---

# Deploy Medusa.js

Open-source commerce backend for building your own online store

**[Deploy Medusa.js on Railway](https://railway.com/template/medusajs)**

- **Creator:** A3A
- **Category:** Other
- **Total deploys:** 2

## Template content

### Redis https://cdn.sanity.io/images/sy1jschh/production/0ce0bfdcfbdbf69662b1116671f97c2dd788b655-157x157.svg

- **Image:** redis:8.2
- **Start command:** `/bin/sh -c "rm -rf $RAILWAY_VOLUME_MOUNT_PATH/lost+found/ && exec docker-entrypoint.sh redis-server --requirepass $REDIS_PASSWORD --save 60 1 --dir $RAILWAY_VOLUME_MOUNT_PATH"`

### Postgres https://devicons.railway.app/i/postgresql.svg

- **Image:** ghcr.io/railwayapp-templates/postgres-ssl:18

### medusa-worker https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/gh/homarr-labs/dashboard-icons/svg/medusa-light.svg

- **Source:** https://github.com/gridalpha/medusa-railway

### medusa-server https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/gh/homarr-labs/dashboard-icons/svg/medusa-light.svg

- **Source:** https://github.com/gridalpha/medusa-railway
- **Public domain:** Yes

## Buckets

- **medusa-media**

## Documentation

# Deploy and Host Medusa on Railway

Medusa is an open-source commerce platform written in TypeScript. Where a hosted store keeps your catalogue, checkout and order logic behind someone else's admin panel, Medusa gives you the same building blocks — products, carts, orders, inventory, pricing, promotions, tax and fulfilment — as modules you own, behind a Store API for any storefront and an Admin API for any back office. Brands reach for it when the checkout or the pricing rules are the product, not a setting.

Deploy Medusa on Railway and this template runs the backend the way Medusa's own deployment guide describes it: a **server** service answering the Store and Admin APIs and serving the dashboard at `/app`, a **worker** service running scheduled jobs, subscribers and long-running workflows, managed **PostgreSQL** holding every commerce record, managed **Redis** carrying the event bus, cache, locks and workflow queues between the two, and an S3-compatible **bucket** for product media. Only the server has a public domain. Both build from [gridalpha/medusa-railway](https://github.com/gridalpha/medusa-railway), pinned to Medusa 2.19.0.

![Medusa server and worker services above Postgres and Redis on Railway](https://res.cloudinary.com/rroe4rtk/image/upload/v1787192190/medusa-architecture.png)

## Getting Started with Medusa on Railway

Set `MEDUSA_ADMIN_EMAIL` and `MEDUSA_ADMIN_PASSWORD` before you deploy — Medusa has no sign-up page and no vendor default credentials, so that pair becomes the only account that can reach the dashboard. The first boot migrates the schema and seeds a working store: EUR/USD currencies, a Europe region across seven countries, tax regions, a warehouse, standard and express shipping, a default sales channel, a publishable API key and four demo products.

Open your Railway domain at `/app` and sign in. Go to **Products**, open one of the four seeded items, add an image under **Media** and confirm it renders — that one action proves the bucket, the upload path and public image reads all work. Then collect the storefront's credentials: **Settings → Publishable API Keys** holds the key every Store API call sends as `x-publishable-api-key`, and **Settings → Regions** holds the region ID a cart needs. A `curl` of `/store/products` with that header confirms the commerce API is live.

![Medusa admin product list showing four published apparel products](https://res.cloudinary.com/rroe4rtk/image/upload/v1787192192/medusa-products.png)
![Medusa T-Shirt page with its image gallery and variant options](https://res.cloudinary.com/rroe4rtk/image/upload/v1787192194/medusa-product-media.png)
![Medusa order detail with line items, totals and authorized payment](https://res.cloudinary.com/rroe4rtk/image/upload/v1787192198/medusa-order.png)

## About Hosting Medusa

Medusa is a backend, not a website. It ships no storefront — you build that in Next.js, Astro or anything else and talk to the Store API. Self-hosting earns its keep once the commerce logic is genuinely custom: bespoke pricing, marketplace payouts, subscription billing, or an ERP that stays authoritative.

- Products with options, variants, categories, collections and multi-currency pricing
- Carts, promotions, tax regions and a pluggable payment and fulfilment layer
- Multi-warehouse inventory with reservations, plus sales channels per storefront
- Orders, returns, exchanges, claims and draft orders in one model
- Durable, resumable workflows, and an Admin dashboard you extend with your own pages

The Railway topology mirrors that split. The **server** handles requests and serves the dashboard; the **worker** runs what must not block one — scheduled jobs, subscribers reacting to `order.placed`, exports and imports. **PostgreSQL** is the system of record, and **Redis** makes the two containers one system: event bus, shared cache, locking provider and workflow engine all run through it. The **bucket** holds uploaded media, so neither app service keeps state on disk and the server can scale to several replicas.

## Why Deploy Medusa on Railway

Railway removes the infrastructure work self-hosting Medusa normally requires.

- Managed PostgreSQL and Redis, provisioned and wired automatically
- Built-in S3-compatible object storage, so there is no MinIO to run
- HTTPS domain with certificates handled, private networking for the rest
- Server and worker deploy from one repository as separate services
- Push once and both rebuild; scale either independently

## Common Use Cases for Self-Hosted Medusa

- **Direct-to-consumer brands** needing a custom checkout, subscription logic or region-specific pricing a hosted platform will not bend
- **B2B commerce** with company accounts, quotes, spending limits and negotiated price lists
- **Marketplaces** where vendors share a catalogue and orders split per vendor
- **Composable replatforming**, keeping an ERP or PIM authoritative and using Medusa for cart, checkout and orders

## Dependencies for Medusa

- **medusa-server** — Medusa 2.19.0 on Node 22 from [gridalpha/medusa-railway](https://github.com/gridalpha/medusa-railway); serves `/store`, `/admin`, `/auth` and `/app` on port 9000
- **medusa-worker** — the same image with `MEDUSA_WORKER_MODE=worker`; jobs, subscribers and workflows, no public domain
- **PostgreSQL** — every commerce record: products, carts, orders, inventory, pricing, promotions, workflow runs
- **Redis** — event bus, response cache, locks, workflow queues and admin sessions
- **Object storage bucket** — uploads, read back through the app's `/media` route

### Environment Variables Reference

| Variable | Purpose |
|---|---|
| `MEDUSA_ADMIN_EMAIL` / `MEDUSA_ADMIN_PASSWORD` | First administrator, created on first boot. Server only |
| `MEDUSA_WORKER_MODE` / `DISABLE_MEDUSA_ADMIN` | `server`+`false` on one service, `worker`+`true` on the other |
| `MEDUSA_PUBLIC_URL` | The server's public URL. Set on **both** services — the worker has no domain |
| `JWT_SECRET` / `COOKIE_SECRET` | Token and session signing. Identical on both, stable across deploys |
| `S3_*` | Bucket, endpoint and credentials for uploaded media |

### Deployment Dependencies

- Source:  (MIT), and its starter 
- Deployment guide: 
- Runtime: Node.js 20.19+ or 22.12+, PostgreSQL 15+, Redis 6+

## Hardware Requirements for Self-Hosting Medusa

| | Minimum | Recommended |
|---|---|---|
| CPU | 1 vCPU per service | 2 vCPU per service |
| RAM | 2 GB per service | 4 GB server, 2 GB worker |
| Storage | Database only | Database plus a bucket for media |
| Runtime | Node.js 20.19+ / 22.12+ | Node.js 22 LTS |

Medusa's guidance is at least 2 GB of RAM per instance; size PostgreSQL and Redis by catalogue and order volume rather than traffic.

## Self-Hosting Medusa

Medusa publishes no ready-made backend image — you scaffold a project and build it:

```
npx create-medusa-app@latest my-store
cd my-store
npx medusa develop
```

For production you build once and run the output, with the same environment on a server and a worker instance:

```
npm run build
cd .medusa/server && npm install --omit=dev
export NODE_ENV=production MEDUSA_WORKER_MODE=server
npx medusa db:migrate && npx medusa start
```

There is no registration page, so create the first administrator with the CLI:

```
npx medusa user -e you@example.com -p your-password
```

## How Much Does Medusa Cost to Self-Host?

Medusa is MIT-licensed and free — no seat limits, transaction fees or paid tiers, and every module here is the open-source build. The company sells Medusa Cloud, a managed hosting product, but nothing is held back from the self-hosted version. On Railway you pay only for compute and storage: two small app services, PostgreSQL, Redis and the bucket. Stripe and other payment providers still charge their own fees.

## FAQ

**What is Medusa?**
Medusa is an open-source, TypeScript commerce platform. It provides products, carts, orders, inventory, pricing, promotions, tax and fulfilment as modules behind a REST API, plus an Admin dashboard — and leaves the storefront to you.

**What does this Railway template deploy?**
A Medusa server (Store API, Admin API and dashboard), a worker, managed PostgreSQL, managed Redis and an object storage bucket. Only the server has a public domain.

**Why does the template include Redis and a separate worker?**
Medusa's production shape runs two instances of the same application. The worker takes scheduled jobs, subscribers and long-running workflows so they never block a request, and Redis is the event bus, cache, lock and queue that lets the two containers act as one. Without them a single instance keeps everything in memory and cannot be scaled.

**How do I log into the Medusa Admin dashboard?**
Open `/app` and sign in with the `MEDUSA_ADMIN_EMAIL` and `MEDUSA_ADMIN_PASSWORD` you set before deploying. Medusa has no sign-up page, and those values are read once, when the account is created — changing them later does not rewrite it. Add more administrators by invitation from **Settings → Users**.

**How do I connect a storefront to self-hosted Medusa?**
Copy the publishable API key from **Settings → Publishable API Keys**, send it as `x-publishable-api-key` on every Store API request, and set `STOREFRONT_URL` to your storefront's origin so CORS allows it. Medusa's Next.js starter: .

**Where do uploaded product images go?**
Into the object storage bucket, not the container filesystem. Medusa serves them back through the application's `/media` route, so image URLs live on your own domain and survive every redeploy.


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