Deploy and Host Paperless-ngx on Railway

Paperless-ngx is a powerful open-source document management system that turns your paper and PDF clutter into a searchable, tagged digital archive. It OCRs every document, extracts text, and lets you find any file in seconds — a self-hosted alternative to Evernote, DocuWare, and paper filing cabinets. This template deploys the full, reliable stack: the Paperless-ngx web app, a managed PostgreSQL database, a Redis task queue, plus Gotenberg and Apache Tika for converting Office and email documents. Private networking, persistent document storage, and CSRF-safe public access are all wired up out of the box. [Updated August '26]

About Hosting Paperless-ngx

Paperless-ngx needs several coordinated services: PostgreSQL for metadata, Redis for its async task queue, and Gotenberg plus Tika to convert Office documents and emails into archivable PDFs. This template provisions all of them, connects them over Railway's private network, and mounts a persistent volume for your documents. The public URL, allowed hosts, and CSRF trusted origins are configured automatically so logins work behind Railway's TLS proxy — the single most common cause of failed Paperless deployments.

Common Use Cases

Digitizing and OCR-indexing receipts, invoices, contracts, and mail into a searchable archive
Running a paperless home or small-business office with automatic tagging and full-text search
Self-hosting a private document vault you fully own, as an alternative to cloud document services

Dependencies for Paperless-ngx Hosting

A PostgreSQL database (included as a managed service in this template)
A Redis instance for the background task queue (included)
Gotenberg and Apache Tika for Office and email document conversion (included)
A persistent volume for your stored documents and media

Why Deploy Paperless-ngx on Railway?

Railway provisions the entire five-service Paperless-ngx stack in one click, with private networking, a persistent document volume, and a public domain already wired up. The notorious CSRF and trusted-origin settings that cause most self-hosted Paperless deploys to fail are pre-configured correctly, so you land on a working login screen instead of a 403. Scale storage and resources up as your archive grows, all from a single dashboard.