---
title: "Deploy open-excalidraw"
description: "Self-hostable collaborative drawing built on Excalidraw"
category: "Starters"
url: https://railway.com/deploy/open-excalidraw
---

# Deploy open-excalidraw

Self-hostable collaborative drawing built on Excalidraw

**[Deploy open-excalidraw on Railway](https://railway.com/template/open-excalidraw)**

- **Creator:** Prateek Mohanty's Projects
- **Category:** Starters
- **Total deploys:** 2

## Template content

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

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

### app https://raw.githubusercontent.com/StrangeNoob/open-excalidraw/main/apps/web/public/icon-512.png

- **Image:** ghcr.io/strangenoob/open-excalidraw:latest
- **Health check:** /health/ready
- **Public domain:** Yes

## Documentation

# Deploy and Host Open Excalidraw on Railway

Open Excalidraw is a self-hostable collaboration and persistence layer built
around the published Excalidraw editor: named drawing dashboards,
authenticated real-time editing, revision history with restore, email-based
invitations with owner/editor/viewer permissions, public read-only share
links, and per-drawing chat.

## About Hosting Open Excalidraw

The template deploys one prebuilt application service
(`ghcr.io/strangenoob/open-excalidraw`) beside Railway's managed PostgreSQL.
Railway generates the authentication secret and the operator recovery token,
references the private database URL, and mounts a persistent volume at
`/data/assets` for binary assets. The image applies database migrations
before each start. No user-entered variables are required. SMTP is optional:
without it, owners copy invitation links for manual delivery.

The application service must run as exactly one replica: real-time
collaboration state lives in-process, and the asset volume mounts to a
single instance. Scaling out is unsupported.

## Why Deploy Open Excalidraw on Railway

- Keep drawings, revision history, and uploaded assets in a database and
  volume you control.
- Start with generated secrets and a working public domain — no manual
  configuration at deploy time.
- Email/password sign-in works immediately; add Google, GitHub, or any
  generic OIDC provider later through environment variables.
- Real-time collaboration and chat run inside the single service with no
  extra infrastructure.
- Move binary assets to any S3-compatible bucket later with the bundled
  migration CLI.

## Common Use Cases

- A team whiteboard with named drawings, private tags, and per-drawing
  permissions.
- Architecture and design diagrams kept under revision history with restore.
- Publishing live read-only share links to documents, wikis, or customers.
- Classroom or workshop sketching where guests draw locally and sign up to
  persist.

## Dependencies for Open Excalidraw Hosting

Open Excalidraw ships as a single Node.js image that serves the web UI, REST
API, and Socket.IO collaboration from port 3000, persisting to PostgreSQL.

### Deployment Dependencies

- Railway service running `ghcr.io/strangenoob/open-excalidraw:latest`
- Railway PostgreSQL service
- Private `${{Postgres.DATABASE_URL}}` service reference
- Generated `BETTER_AUTH_SECRET` and `ADMIN_RESET_TOKEN`
- Persistent volume at `/data/assets` for binary assets


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