How do I deploy Mosquitto MQTT on Railway?

You can deploy Mosquitto MQTT 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: mosquitto-mqtt-71cf53c1, or click "Get template help" for this template for more assistance.

Deploy and Host Mosquitto MQTT on Railway

What is Mosquitto MQTT? Eclipse Mosquitto is a lightweight open-source message broker that implements the MQTT protocol. Publishers send messages to named topics; subscribers receive them in real time. It is widely used for IoT, telemetry, and event-driven backends where many clients need reliable, low-overhead messaging over TCP.

About Hosting Mosquitto MQTT

Running Mosquitto in production means packaging the broker (often via Docker), exposing the correct TCP port (typically 1883 for plain MQTT), and persisting state if you rely on retained messages or durable sessions. You configure listeners, logging, and persistence paths, then decide whether connections are anonymous or authenticated (for example with password_file). On a platform like Railway, you connect the service’s public hostname and port to your clients, attach a volume for /mosquitto/data when you need persistence across deploys, and set environment variables for optional username/password auth so the broker starts with a consistent, secure policy.

Common Use Cases

IoT and sensors — Devices publish telemetry; dashboards or backends subscribe without polling.
Real-time apps — Chat-style features, live updates, or coordination between services over topics.
Edge-to-cloud bridges — A central broker aggregates messages from field gateways or smaller brokers.

Dependencies for Mosquitto MQTT Hosting

Docker — This template builds from the official eclipse-mosquitto image and adds project config (see Dockerfile).
Railway — Account and project to build from the Dockerfile and run the service with the right PORT mapping to 1883.

Deployment Dependencies

Implementation Details

The image extends eclipse-mosquitto:latest, copies config/mqtt/mosquitto.conf, and uses docker-entrypoint.sh to enable password auth when both MQTT_USER and MQTT_PASS are set.

FROM eclipse-mosquitto:latest

COPY config/mqtt/mosquitto.conf /mosquitto/config/mosquitto.conf
COPY docker-entrypoint.sh /usr/local/bin/docker-entrypoint.sh

RUN chmod +x /usr/local/bin/docker-entrypoint.sh

ENTRYPOINT ["/usr/local/bin/docker-entrypoint.sh"]
CMD ["/usr/sbin/mosquitto", "-c", "/mosquitto/config/mosquitto.conf"]

railway.toml uses the Dockerfile builder and an ON_FAILURE restart policy:

[build]
builder = "DOCKERFILE"

[deploy]
restartPolicyType = "ON_FAILURE"
restartPolicyMaxRetries = 10

Environment variables (Railway):

Variable	Purpose
`PORT`	Railway injects this; map public TCP to 1883 for MQTT clients.
`MQTT_USER`	If set together with `MQTT_PASS`, enables auth via `mosquitto_passwd`.
`MQTT_PASS`	Password for `MQTT_USER`; if either is missing, anonymous access stays allowed (per entrypoint).
`TZ`	Optional timezone for the container (e.g. `Europe/Berlin`).

For production, set both MQTT_USER and MQTT_PASS, mount persistent storage on /mosquitto/data, and keep the external port aligned with 1883.

Why Deploy Mosquitto MQTT 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 Mosquitto MQTT 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.