Deploy and Host Open WebUI on Railway

Open WebUI is a self-hosted web interface for large language models. It talks to Ollama or any OpenAI-compatible endpoint, keeps chats, users and settings in its own database, and runs entirely on infrastructure you control.

About Hosting Open WebUI

This template runs the official image on a pinned release, 0.10.2, rather than a floating tag, so a redeploy gives you back the same version you verified. The container listens on 8080 and is served over HTTPS on a Railway domain.

State lives on a persistent volume mounted at /app/backend/data: the database, uploaded files and the vector index survive restarts and redeploys. WEBUI_SECRET_KEY is generated per deployment, so sessions are not signed with an empty or shared key.

Common Use Cases

A private ChatGPT-style front end for a team, pointed at your own Ollama server or an OpenAI-compatible API
A shared workspace for prompts, documents and retrieval over uploaded files
One vendor-neutral UI in front of several model providers at once

Dependencies for Open WebUI Hosting

A persistent volume, included in this template, for the database and uploads
A model backend: an Ollama instance, or any OpenAI-compatible endpoint. Point it at one after the first deploy under Settings, or add OLLAMA_BASE_URL / OPENAI_API_BASE_URL as service variables.

Deployment Dependencies

Open WebUI documentation: https://docs.openwebui.com
Source: https://github.com/open-webui/open-webui

Implementation Details

Variables the template sets for you:

Variable	Value	Why
PORT	8080	The port the image actually listens on
DATA_DIR	/app/backend/data	Points the app at the mounted volume
WEBUI_URL	the public domain	Correct absolute links and OAuth redirects
WEBUI_SECRET_KEY	generated	Signs sessions, unique per deployment
ENABLE_SIGNUP	true	Lets you create the first account

The first account you create becomes the administrator. Set ENABLE_SIGNUP to false afterwards to close registration.

Why Deploy Open WebUI on Railway?

Railway gives it exactly what it needs: a volume that persists, HTTPS on a domain without extra setup, and a redeploy that keeps your data. When a new release lands, change the image tag and redeploy.