NEWEST V5.52.2 VERSION!!!

Deploy and Host Strapi 5 on Railway

Strapi 5 is the leading open-source headless CMS. It gives you a customizable admin panel and auto-generated REST and GraphQL APIs, so you can model content once and deliver it to any frontend — websites, mobile apps, or anything else that speaks HTTP.

About Hosting Strapi 5

This template deploys the latest Strapi 5 (TypeScript) together with a PostgreSQL database, pre-wired and ready to use. All required secrets (APP_KEYS, JWT_SECRET, ADMIN_JWT_SECRET, API_TOKEN_SALT, TRANSFER_TOKEN_SALT, ENCRYPTION_KEY) are generated automatically at deploy time. Strapi connects to Postgres over Railway's private network, so no database traffic touches the public internet and you save on egress fees. The deployment is health-checked against Strapi's built-in /_health endpoint, so a release only goes live once the app is actually up. After the first deploy, open /admin on your service domain to create your admin user and start modeling content.

Common Use Cases

Content backend for websites and blogs built with Next.js, Astro, Nuxt, or any other frontend framework
API-first backend for mobile apps, with the users-permissions plugin handling authentication and roles
Centralized content hub delivering the same content to multiple channels through REST or GraphQL

Dependencies for Strapi 5 Hosting

PostgreSQL (included — deployed and connected automatically)

Deployment Dependencies

Strapi 5 documentation
Optional: a Cloudinary account for persistent media uploads — set CLOUDINARY_NAME, CLOUDINARY_KEY, and CLOUDINARY_SECRET on the Strapi service to enable it. Without it, uploads are stored on the container filesystem and won't survive redeploys unless you mount a volume at /app/public/uploads.

Implementation Details

To develop locally, eject the service to your own GitHub repository, clone it, then:

npm install
railway link
railway run npm run develop