Deploy and Host Terminal on Railway

Terminal is a browser shell that runs inside your Railway project's private network. Add it to a project that already has Postgres, MySQL, Redis or MongoDB, open its domain, and you have psql, mysql, redis-cli, mongosh, the dump tools and the Railway CLI right next to your data. Nothing gets a public TCP proxy, and traffic over the private network doesn't count as egress.

About Hosting Terminal

One service and a small volume for your home directory. A ttyd web terminal behind basic auth drops you into a tmux session, so a long pg_dump or migration keeps running when you close the tab. The db command finds the databases in the project and opens the right client:

$ db
   1  postgres Postgres/DATABASE_URL  postgresql://postgres:•••@postgres.railway.internal:5432/railway
   2  redis    Redis/REDIS_URL        redis://default:•••@redis.railway.internal:6379

$ db 1            # psql on Postgres
$ db dump 1       # pg_dump -Fc into ~/dumps

Common Use Cases

Query a project's Postgres, MySQL, Redis or MongoDB from the browser, without a public TCP proxy
Take a dump before a risky migration, or restore one into a new database
Run a one-off script or migration against a private service
Debug service-to-service traffic: dig, curl and nc against *.railway.internal
Use the Railway CLI from a phone or a locked-down laptop

Dependencies for Terminal Hosting

None of its own. It's meant to be added to an existing project, next to the services you want to reach.

Deployment Dependencies

ttyd web terminal
PostgreSQL 18 client tools (they dump older servers too), MySQL 8 client, redis-cli, mongosh and the MongoDB database tools
Railway CLI

Implementation Details

Add it to your project: open the project, press the + button (or Cmd/Ctrl+K), pick Template and search for "Terminal". Deploying the template from the marketplace page instead creates a new, empty project.

Log in: open the service's domain and sign in with WEB_USER and the generated WEB_PASSWORD (Variables tab).

Point it at your databases, in one of two ways:

Add reference variables to the terminal service, for example DATABASE_URL=${{Postgres.DATABASE_URL}} or REDIS_URL=${{Redis.REDIS_URL}}. Any variable holding a postgres://, mysql://, redis:// or mongodb:// URL shows up in db.
Or set RAILWAY_TOKEN to a project token (Project Settings → Tokens). db then lists the connection URLs of every service in the environment, and the railway CLI works without railway login.

Handy commands:

db, db N, db dump N, db url N
pg_restore -d "$DATABASE_URL" --no-owner ~/dumps/‹file›.dump
dig AAAA api.railway.internal, nc -zv api.railway.internal 8080

Notes and limits:

Anyone with the password can reach every database the shell can. Keep WEB_PASSWORD strong. If it's empty, the domain shows a notice instead of the terminal.
You're root. apt install works, but only /root survives a redeploy.
Big dumps need disk: grow the volume first, or stream them elsewhere.

Why Deploy Terminal 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 Terminal 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.