Deploy and Host Open Notebook on Railway

Open Notebook is an open-source, privacy-focused alternative to Google NotebookLM. You collect sources such as PDFs, web pages, videos and notes into notebooks, then chat with them, search them and generate summaries, insights and podcast-style audio, using whichever AI providers and models you choose to connect.

About Hosting Open Notebook

This template runs the official lfnovo/open_notebook:1.14.0 image with SurrealDB as its database. The app is password-protected with a generated password, and API keys you add in Settings are encrypted with a generated key. Only the web UI is public; it proxies the API internally, and SurrealDB stays on the private network with its own generated password. Uploads and the database live on Railway volumes, so notebooks survive redeploys. You bring an API key for OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Groq, OpenRouter or another provider, or point it at your own Ollama. The app needs about 1 GB of memory.

Common Use Cases

Research notebooks that you can question with AI
Turning papers, articles and videos into summaries and study notes
Podcast-style audio overviews of your own material

Dependencies for Open Notebook Hosting

lfnovo/open_notebook:1.14.0 (official image)
surrealdb/surrealdb:v2.7.0 (official image)
An API key for at least one AI provider

Deployment Dependencies

Implementation Details

Service	Source	Networking	Storage
notebook	`lfnovo/open_notebook:1.14.0`	public domain on 8502	volume at `/app/data`
surrealdb	`surrealdb/surrealdb:v2.7.0`	private, 8000	volume at `/mydata`

Variable	Default	Purpose
`OPEN_NOTEBOOK_PASSWORD`	generated	Password for the web UI and API
`OPEN_NOTEBOOK_ENCRYPTION_KEY`	generated	Encrypts stored provider keys; keep it stable
`SURREAL_PASS`	generated	SurrealDB root password
`CORS_ORIGINS`	`https://${{RAILWAY_PUBLIC_DOMAIN}}`	Only your domain may call the API

Notes:

Add provider keys under Settings > API Keys, then pick default models.
Changing the encryption key makes stored provider keys unreadable.

This is a community-maintained deployment package and does not imply affiliation with or endorsement by the Open Notebook project.

Why Deploy Open Notebook 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 Open Notebook 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.