Deploy and Host n8n on Railway

Self-host n8n with Railway Postgres. Official n8nio/n8n image. This is the Zapier-shaped stack on c17.io/stacks/n8n-automation. Activepieces is a separate template: 9o4t/activepieces.

No LLM or SaaS API keys are required to boot. Railway injects PORT. The template generates N8N_ENCRYPTION_KEY and wires WEBHOOK_URL to the public domain.

About Hosting n8n

n8n is fair-code workflow automation: HTTP, webhooks, spreadsheets, Slack, and a large node library. Credentials live in Postgres, encrypted with N8N_ENCRYPTION_KEY. Binary data and the settings file live on a volume at /home/node/.n8n.

On Railway this is two services:

Service	Source	Public	Notes
`n8n`	Docker image `n8nio/n8n`	Yes	Health `GET /healthz`. Volume `/home/node/.n8n`.
`Postgres`	Railway plugin	No	Workflows, credentials, execution history.

The first account you create in the editor is the owner. There is no default username or password.

Common Use Cases

Replace a Zapier or Make graph: form → PocketBase → Resend / Slack
Webhook ingress for agents and SaaS events
Scheduled jobs you can version and fork
Air-gapped or customer-data workflows you will not put on a metered SaaS

Dependencies for n8n Hosting

Required (wired or generated — you do not type these)

Variable	Service	Source
`PORT`	n8n	Injected. Also set `N8N_PORT=${{PORT}}`.
`N8N_PROTOCOL`	n8n	`https`
`N8N_HOST`	n8n	`${{RAILWAY_PUBLIC_DOMAIN}}`
`WEBHOOK_URL`	n8n	`https://${{RAILWAY_PUBLIC_DOMAIN}}`
`N8N_ENCRYPTION_KEY`	n8n	Generated 32-byte hex. Back this up. Losing it makes stored credentials unreadable.
`DB_TYPE`	n8n	`postgresdb`
`DB_POSTGRESDB_HOST`	n8n	`${{Postgres.PGHOST}}`
`DB_POSTGRESDB_PORT`	n8n	`${{Postgres.PGPORT}}`
`DB_POSTGRESDB_DATABASE`	n8n	`${{Postgres.PGDATABASE}}`
`DB_POSTGRESDB_USER`	n8n	`${{Postgres.PGUSER}}`
`DB_POSTGRESDB_PASSWORD`	n8n	`${{Postgres.PGPASSWORD}}`

Optional

Variable	Required	Why
`GENERIC_TIMEZONE`	No	Cron timezone, e.g. `America/New_York`. Default UTC.
`N8N_EDITOR_BASE_URL`	No	Override editor URL if you add a custom domain later.
Slack / OpenAI / Google keys	No	Added inside n8n credentials after deploy. BYO. Not template variables.

n8n used to ship N8N_BASIC_AUTH_*. Current images use the built-in owner account instead. Do not rely on basic-auth env vars.

Volume

Mount	Service	Why
`/home/node/.n8n`	n8n	Settings, binary data, local files. Keep it even with Postgres.

Why Deploy n8n on Railway?

Zapier Professional meters tasks. A small sales-ops shop hits four figures a year before the graph is interesting. n8n on a Railway service plus Postgres is usually a few dollars a month; you pay the APIs you call, not a per-zap tax. Trial credits cover the first deploy for most people. c17 never charges you — Railway usage is the referral / template kickback.

See TEMPLATE.md for the marketplace / composer shape.

Run locally

cp .env.example .env
# set POSTGRES_PASSWORD and N8N_ENCRYPTION_KEY (openssl rand -hex 32)
docker compose up

Editor: http://localhost:5678 — create the first owner account.

License

n8n is fair-code (Sustainable Use License). This repo is config and docs only.