Deploy TREK

Deploy and Host TREK on Railway

TREK is an open source collaborative travel planner you host yourself. Plan day by day on a live map with friends or family, keep flights, hotels and reservations in one place, split costs, build packing lists, and share a read-only trip page. It adds hikes and tours with elevation profiles, offline access, mobile apps for iPhone and Android, single sign-on, an optional AI assistant and an MCP server. It is AGPL-3.0 licensed with about 15,600 GitHub stars and comes in 28 languages; v5.1.4 shipped in November 2026. This template runs TREK 5.1.0 on Railway with one persistent volume, a generated admin password and encryption key, and a public HTTPS domain. Wanderlog Pro costs about $40/year and TripIt Pro $49/year per person. TREK on Railway costs about $5/month for everyone you travel with.

What This Template Deploys

The start command moves TREK's data and upload folders onto the volume on first boot, fixes their ownership, then starts the image's own entrypoint, so trips survive redeploys.

About Hosting TREK

Trip planning usually ends up split across a shared doc, a maps list, an email folder of bookings and a spreadsheet of who paid what. Hosted planners pull that together but charge each traveler and keep your itineraries and documents on their servers. TREK puts everything in one app on your own domain.

Day plans on a map. Drag places, notes and bookings between days, with route lines, clustering and a whole-trip overview. Place search works without an API key.

Routes and transit. Auto-sort a day's stops, pick a travel mode per leg, see public transport options, and open the day in Google Maps or other navigation apps.

Bookings. Flights, trains, stays and 18 booking types with confirmation codes, travelers and attached files. Import confirmations from email, PDF or wallet passes.

Costs. Split expenses with equal or custom shares, track several payers, settle up, and use any currency with the rate locked at entry.

Packing and to-dos. Lists with categories, templates, assignees and reminders.

Collaboration. Edits sync live for everyone on the trip, with chat, polls, shared notes, invite links, guests without logins and a public read-only share page.

Tours. Hikes, bike rides, paddles and ski tours with elevation profiles, 3D terrain and multi-day stages.

Journal and photo book. Optional journal entries with photos and maps, plus a printable photo book designer.

Offline and mobile. Install it as an app or use the iOS and Android apps; trips open without a network.

Deploy TREK in Under 5 Minutes

1. Click Deploy on Railway. The admin password and encryption key are generated for you.
2. Wait for the service to turn healthy. The first boot prints a long route list, so give it a few minutes.
3. Open the public domain and sign in as admin@trek.local with the ADMIN_PASSWORD value from the Variables tab.
4. Change the admin password when TREK asks, before inviting anyone.
5. Create your first trip and send the invite link to your travel companions.

Common Use Cases

• Group trips: plan a holiday with friends on one shared map and split the bills fairly.
• Family travel: keep everyone's flights, hotels and packing lists in one place.
• Road trips: plan driving days, stops and overnight stays.
• Hiking and outdoor tours: route hikes by difficulty and check elevation before you go.
• Travel journals: write up each day with photos and turn the trip into a photo book.
• Event logistics: coordinate a wedding, offsite or reunion with bookings and to-dos.
• Private itineraries: keep passport scans and confirmations off third-party travel apps.
• Vacation planning at work: track leave days, public holidays and school holidays in the Vacay calendar.
• Travel stats: mark countries and regions you have visited on the Atlas and keep a bucket list.
• Calendar sync: subscribe to a trip's ICS feed so bookings appear in your phone's calendar.
• GPX tracks: import recorded hikes or rides and compare them with the route you planned.

Configuration

Custom domain. Add it in Railway, then set APP_URL and ALLOWED_ORIGINS to the new address and redeploy.

Email. Add SMTP settings so invites, reminders and password resets are sent. TREK also supports webhook, ntfy and Web Push notifications.

Single sign-on. Connect an OpenID Connect provider such as Authentik, Keycloak or Google, and turn on two-factor login or passkeys for every user.

Addons. Admins switch features on and off. Journal, Collections, the AI assistant, booking parsing, road trips and the MCP server start off.

AI assistant. Bring your own Anthropic, OpenAI, Gemini or OpenRouter key; every change it proposes waits for you to apply it.

Permissions. An admin decides who can do each of 17 trip actions, from editing days to managing costs, and whether new users can sign up on their own. For a family instance, turn off open sign-up and invite people by link.

Maps. OpenFreeMap vector maps work with no token. Add a Mapbox token or Google Places key only if you want those providers' styles or place data.

Weather and holidays. Forecasts come from Open-Meteo, and the Vacay leave calendar pulls public holidays automatically, both without keys.

Plugins. Admins can install sandboxed plugins from the TREK registry for extra map layers, notification channels and more. Set TREK_PLUGINS_ENABLED=false to turn plugins off entirely.

Backups. Scheduled backups with retention are built in, and everything lives on the one volume. Keep ENCRYPTION_KEY with your backups; without it, stored secrets can't be read after a restore.

Resources. TREK is a single Node service and runs comfortably on a few hundred megabytes of memory for a family or small group.

TREK vs. Alternatives

Wanderlog has a polished app and travel guides. TripIt shines at organizing booking emails. AdventureLog is a good self-hosted travel log. TREK combines planning, bookings, budgets and collaboration in one private app.

Dependencies for TREK Hosting

• A Railway account.
• Optional: an SMTP provider for invites and reminders.
• Optional: an LLM API key for the AI assistant.

Deployment Dependencies

• TREK on GitHub: source code and releases
• TREK on Docker Hub: image tags
• TREK wiki: setup and feature guides

Implementation Details

The image is pinned to 5.1.0 while 5.1.4 is out; to upgrade, change the tag and redeploy after a backup. Place search and routing use free services sponsored for self-hosted TREK, so no map keys are needed. The project moved from the mauriceboe account to the liketrek organization on GitHub, while Docker images still publish as mauriceboe/trek.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is TREK? An AGPL-3.0 self-hosted travel planner for collaborative itineraries, bookings, budgets, packing lists and journals.

How much does it cost to host TREK? About $5/month on Railway, shared by everyone on your instance.

What is the admin login? admin@trek.local with the ADMIN_PASSWORD value from the Variables tab. Change it on first sign-in.

Can people join without an account? Yes. Add guests to a trip, or share a public read-only page.

Is there a mobile app? Yes. TREK has iPhone, iPad and Android apps that connect to your server, and it installs as a web app too.

Does it need a Google Maps key? No. Place search, routing and weather work without keys; Google Places is optional.

Why Deploy and Host TREK 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 TREK on Railway, you get a private, collaborative trip planner with maps, bookings and shared budgets, without per-person subscriptions.