Installation - Self-hosted

Tip

Quick Installation (recommended):

curl -fsSL https://cdn.coollabs.io/coolify/install.sh | sudo bash

For detailed setup instructions, including firewall configuration and prerequisites, see the Quick Installation Guide below.

Prerequisites

Server Requirements

You need a server with SSH access. This can be:

• A VPS
• A Dedicated Server
• A VM in Proxmox
• A Raspberry Pi (for all compatible models read the Raspberry Pi OS Setup Guide prerequisites)
• Any other server with SSH access

Note

It is strongly recommended to use a fresh, newly created server for installing Coolify. Installing on an existing server with other applications may lead to conflicts or unexpected behavior.

Tip

If you don’t have a server or server provider yet, we recommend using Hetzner.

You can use our referral link. It will help us to keep the project alive.

Supported Operating Systems

• Debian based Linux distributions (Debian, Ubuntu, etc.)
• Redhat based Linux distributions (CentOS, Fedora, Redhat, AlmaLinux, Rocky, Asahi, etc.)
• SUSE based Linux distributions (SLES, SUSE, openSUSE, etc.)
• Arch Linux
• Raspberry Pi OS 64-bit (Raspbian)
• Alpine Linux

Supported Architectures

We only support 64-bit architectures:

• AMD64
• ARM64

Caution

For Raspberry Pi users: You must use the 64-bit version of Raspberry Pi OS (Raspbian). See our Raspberry Pi OS Setup Guide for instructions.

Minimum Hardware Requirements

Server Requirements for Coolify

• 2 Core CPU
• 2 GBs memory (RAM)
• 30+ GB of storage for the images

If you build and host on the same server as Coolify and your builds are utilizing all available memory, this may cause the server to become unresponsive or even crash. To prevent this, consider enabling swap space on your server (or paying for more resources).

Server Requirements for Your Resources

Choosing your server resources depends on your usage. If you are planning to run a lot of things, you should consider buying a server with more resources.

Hosting Supabase, Appwrite or Posthog requires more resources than hosting a static site (waay more).

Tip

Here is an example. I’m hosting most of my production stuffs on a server with:

- 8GB of memory (average usage 3.5GB)
- 4 CPUs (average usage ~20-30%)
- 150GB disk (usage 40GB)

For the following things:

- 3 NodeJS apps
- 4 Static sites
- Plausible Analytics (for visitor analytics)
- Fider (feedback tool)
- UptimeKuma (uptime monitoring)
- Ghost (my newsletters)
- 3 Redis databases
- 2 PostgreSQL databases

Installation Methods

1. Quick Installation (Recommended)

1. Prepare Your Servern

   • Log in as the root user (non-root user is not fully supported yet [non-root-user](/docs/ knowledge-base/server/non-root-user))
   • Configure SSH by following the SSH Settings Configuration Guide
   • Configure required firewall ports using the Firewall Guide (if you are an advanced user you can have this configured differently)
   • Ensure curl is installed (pre-installed on most systems)

2. Run the Installation Script

   Tip

   If you want to make the installation more secure by never exposing the registration page (recommended), you can follow the Create Root User with Environment Variables guide.

   curl -fsSL https://cdn.coollabs.io/coolify/install.sh | sudo bash

   View the Scripts Source Code

   Note

   The installation script must be run as root. If you’re not logged in as root, the script will use sudo to elevate privileges.

3. Access Coolify

   • You can find the URL of your Coolify instance in the installation output.
   • It is recommended to use the PrivateIP to access Coolify as it is more secure (a VPN setup to your Server is needed for that to work).

   Note

   If you installed Coolify on a Raspberry Pi which is in your home network you can use the private IP address to access Coolify as the public IP address will not work.

The installer does the following:

• Installs required tools (curl wget git jq openssl)
• Installs Docker Engine (27)

Caution

Docker engine installed via snap is not supported!

• Configures Docker logging
• Configures Docker daemon with default address pools
• Creates directory structure at /data/coolify
• Sets up SSH keys for server management
• Installs and starts Coolify

2. Manual Installation

For users who prefer more control over the installation process.

1. SSH Configuration Make sure SSH is enabled and configured correctly like shown in the SSH Configuration Guide.

2. Install Required Tools Make sure the curl command is available on your server.

3. Install Docker Engine Follow the official documentation to install Docker Engine (24+) on your server: Docker Engine Installation.

   Caution

   Docker engine installed via snap is not supported!

4. Configure Docker Configure Docker logging and default address pools by editing /etc/docker/daemon.json with the following configuration (the adress pools can also be configured differently)

   {
     "log-driver": "json-file",
     "log-opts": {
       "max-size": "10m",
       "max-file": "3"
     },
     "default-address-pools": [
       {"base":"10.0.0.0/8","size":24}
     ]
   }

   After saving the configuration, restart Docker:

   systemctl restart docker

5. Create Directory Structure Create the base configuration directories under /data/coolify.

   mkdir -p /data/coolify/{source,ssh,applications,databases,backups,services,proxy,webhooks-during-maintenance}
   mkdir -p /data/coolify/ssh/{keys,mux}
   mkdir -p /data/coolify/proxy/dynamic

6. Generate SSH Keys Generate an SSH key for Coolify to be able to manage this server from itself.

   ssh-keygen -f /data/coolify/ssh/keys/[email protected] -t ed25519 -N '' -C root@coolify

7. Configure SSH Access Add your public SSH key to ~/.ssh/authorized_keys. This will allow Coolify to connect to this server from itself.

   cat /data/coolify/ssh/keys/[email protected] >>~/.ssh/authorized_keys
   chmod 600 ~/.ssh/authorized_keys

   Tip

   You can skip this step if you already have an SSH key. But you need to add this key to your Coolify instance after installation.

8. Download Configuration Files Copy the docker-compose.yml, docker-compose.prod.yml, .env.production & upgrade.sh files from Coolify’s CDN to /data/coolify/source.

   curl -fsSL https://cdn.coollabs.io/coolify/docker-compose.yml -o /data/coolify/source/docker-compose.yml
   curl -fsSL https://cdn.coollabs.io/coolify/docker-compose.prod.yml -o /data/coolify/source/docker-compose.prod.yml
   curl -fsSL https://cdn.coollabs.io/coolify/.env.production -o /data/coolify/source/.env
   curl -fsSL https://cdn.coollabs.io/coolify/upgrade.sh -o /data/coolify/source/upgrade.sh

9. Set Permissions Set permissions for all the files and directories.

   chown -R 9999:root /data/coolify
   chmod -R 700 /data/coolify

10. Configure Environment Variables Generate values for the following variables in /data/coolify/source/.env.

    sed -i "s|APP_ID=.*|APP_ID=$(openssl rand -hex 16)|g" /data/coolify/source/.env
    sed -i "s|APP_KEY=.*|APP_KEY=base64:$(openssl rand -base64 32)|g" /data/coolify/source/.env
    sed -i "s|DB_PASSWORD=.*|DB_PASSWORD=$(openssl rand -base64 32)|g" /data/coolify/source/.env
    sed -i "s|REDIS_PASSWORD=.*|REDIS_PASSWORD=$(openssl rand -base64 32)|g" /data/coolify/source/.env
    sed -i "s|PUSHER_APP_ID=.*|PUSHER_APP_ID=$(openssl rand -hex 32)|g" /data/coolify/source/.env
    sed -i "s|PUSHER_APP_KEY=.*|PUSHER_APP_KEY=$(openssl rand -hex 32)|g" /data/coolify/source/.env
    sed -i "s|PUSHER_APP_SECRET=.*|PUSHER_APP_SECRET=$(openssl rand -hex 32)|g" /data/coolify/source/.env

    Caution

    This only needs to be done once, when you install Coolify for the first time. If you do it after Coolify has been first started, it will break your installation.

    Make sure you save the values somewhere that are stored in the .env file. If you lose them, you will lose access to your Coolify installation and all your data.

11. Configure Root User (Recommended) Configure Root User via Environment Variables. To prevent the registration page from ever being exposed, you can configure a root user in your .env file. Read more about this in the Create Root User with Environment Variables guide.

12. Create Docker Network Make sure the default coolify Docker network is available.

    docker network create --attachable coolify

13. Start Coolify

    docker compose --env-file /data/coolify/source/.env -f /data/coolify/source/docker-compose.yml -f /data/coolify/source/docker-compose.prod.yml up -d --pull always --remove-orphans --force-recreate

14. Access Installation Now you can access Coolify on port http://<ip>:8000 of your server.

3. Docker Desktop Installation

For local development and testing purposes only.

Caution

This is not recommended for production usage. This is only for testing purposes.

• Install Docker Desktop for Windows.
• Create a directory that will hold all your Coolify related data. For example in your User directory: C:\Users\yourusername\coolify.
• Copy docker-compose.windows.yml and .env.windows-docker-desktop.example to the directory you created in the previous step.
• Rename docker-compose.windows.yml to docker-compose.yml.
• Rename .env.windows-docker-desktop.example to .env.
• Create a coolify docker network with docker network create coolify.
• Optional: Change the values in .env file.
• Start Coolify with docker compose up command.
• You can access Coolify on port localhost:8000 of your machine.

Caution

Coolify Proxy is still not working on Windows.