How do I deploy Prometheus Blackbox Exporter on Railway?

You can deploy Prometheus Blackbox Exporter on Railway by clicking the "Deploy Now" button on this page. Railway will automatically set up all the necessary services and configurations for you.

What are the system requirements?

Railway handles all the infrastructure requirements. You only need a web browser to deploy and manage your application.

Is this template free to use?

Yes, this template is free to use within your existing Railway account.

Can I customize this template?

Yes, you can fully customize this template. After deployment, you will have full control of what you've deployed in your Railway project.

How do I get support for this template?

You can get support through our community forum: prometheus-blackbox-exporter-26d5aa6d, or click "Get template help" for this template for more assistance.

Deploy and Host Prometheus Blackbox Exporter on Railway

Prometheus Blackbox Exporter actively probes HTTP, HTTPS, TCP, DNS, and ICMP endpoints from the outside and exposes results as Prometheus metrics. It answers "is this reachable?" — enabling uptime monitoring, SSL certificate expiry alerts, and latency tracking without modifying application code.

About Hosting Prometheus Blackbox Exporter

Hosting the Blackbox Exporter requires running a long-lived HTTP service that Prometheus scrapes on demand. Each scrape triggers a live probe against a target URL or host, so the exporter must have outbound internet access and a stable, reachable endpoint for your Prometheus instance to query. Configuration is managed through a YAML file defining probe modules (HTTP, TCP, DNS, etc.). On Railway, the service runs as a single stateless container — no volumes, no databases, no sidecars required. Railway handles TLS termination, port assignment, and health checking automatically, making it one of the simplest services to operate.

Common Use Cases

Uptime and availability monitoring — continuously probe production URLs and fire alerts when probe_success drops to 0
SSL certificate expiry alerting — track probe_ssl_earliest_cert_expiry and alert weeks before a cert expires
TCP port reachability checks — verify that databases, message brokers, or SSH hosts are accepting connections from outside your private network

Dependencies for Prometheus Blackbox Exporter Hosting

Prometheus — a running Prometheus instance to scrape the /probe endpoint and evaluate alerting rules
Alertmanager (optional) — routes firing alerts to PagerDuty, Slack, or email when probes fail or certs near expiry

Deployment Dependencies

Prometheus Blackbox Exporter — GitHub
[Full module configuration reference](https://github.com/prometheus/blackbox_exporter /blob/master/CONFIGURATION.md)
[Prometheus scrape configuration docs](https://prometheus.io/docs/prometheus/latest/c onfiguration/configuration/#scrape_config)
Awesome Prometheus alerting rules (blackbox)

Implementation Details

Trigger a probe by passing target and module as query parameters:

GET /probe?target=https://example.com&module=http_2xx

Prometheus scrape config to wire this service into your existing Prometheus instance:

scrape_configs:
  - job_name: blackbox
    metrics_path: /probe
    params:
      module: [http_2xx]
    static_configs:
      - targets:
          - https://example.com
          - https://your-api.com/health
    relabel_configs:
      - source_labels: [__address__]
        target_label: __param_target
      - source_labels: [__param_target]
        target_label: instance
      - target_label: __address__
        replacement: :443
## Why Deploy Prometheus Blackbox Exporter 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 Prometheus Blackbox Exporter 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.