Deploy and Host NextChat on Railway

NextChat is a production-ready AI chat interface that connects to multiple LLM providers through a single, self-hosted web application. It's essentially a private ChatGPT interface that works with OpenAI, Anthropic Claude, Google Gemini, and 20+ other AI services—all running from your own Railway deployment with your own API keys.

About Hosting NextChat

Hosting NextChat gives you complete control over your AI interactions. The application runs as a standalone Next.js container that manages API connections, maintains conversation history in browser storage, and provides a responsive interface that works on desktop and mobile. The real power comes from its flexibility: you can switch between GPT-4, Claude 3, Gemini Pro, or DeepSeek models mid-conversation, all while keeping your API keys secure and your data private. Railway handles the containerization and scaling, while NextChat manages the AI orchestration layer.

Common Use Cases

Private AI workspace: Teams using multiple AI providers without sharing corporate API keys or exposing sensitive prompts
Model comparison platform: Researchers and developers testing responses across different LLMs for quality assurance
Cost-controlled AI access: Organizations providing AI tools to employees while maintaining usage visibility through their own API accounts

Dependencies for NextChat Hosting

OpenAI API key (required): Powers GPT-3.5, GPT-4, and GPT-5 model access
Optional AI provider keys: Anthropic (Claude), Google (Gemini), or any of the 20+ supported providers

Deployment Dependencies

Implementation Details

The key configuration happens through environment variables in Railway:

# Required
OPENAI_API_KEY=sk-...

# Security (auto-generated if not set)
ACCESS_CODE=your-secure-password

# Optional providers
GOOGLE_API_KEY=...
ANTHROPIC_API_KEY=...

# Feature flags
HIDE_USER_API_KEY=true  # Hide API key field from users
ENABLE_MCP=true         # Enable Model Context Protocol
DEFAULT_MODEL=gpt-3.5-turbo

The application listens on PORT (provided by Railway) and includes a health check endpoint at /api/config for monitoring.

Why Deploy NextChat 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 NextChat 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.