Deploy a Bun application on Railway

Railway is an infrastructure platform: you provision infrastructure, develop against it locally, then deploy to the cloud. Railway deploys from GitHub with zero configuration, handles SSL automatically, and provisions databases.

This guide deploys a Bun application with an optional PostgreSQL database, the same setup the following template provides.

You can either follow this guide step-by-step or deploy the pre-configured template with one click:

Prerequisites:

• A Bun application ready for deployment
• A Railway account
• Railway CLI (for CLI deployment method)
• A GitHub account (for Dashboard deployment method)

Method 1: Deploy via CLI

1. Step 1

   Install the Railway CLI.

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   bun install -g @railway/cli
   

2. Step 2

   Log into your Railway account.

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   railway login
   

3. Step 3

   After authenticating, initialize a new project.

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   railway init
   

4. Step 4

   After initializing the project, add a new database and service.

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   # Add PostgreSQL database. Make sure to add this first!
   railway add --database postgres
   
   # Add your application service.
   railway add --service bun-react-db --variables DATABASE_URL=\${{Postgres.DATABASE_URL}}
   

5. Step 5

   After creating and connecting the services, deploy the application to Railway. By default, services are only accessible within Railway's private network, so generate a public domain to make your app publicly accessible.

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   # Deploy your application
   railway up
   
   # Generate public domain
   railway domain
   

Your app is now live. railway up deploys your local directory rather than a GitHub repository. To have Railway auto-deploy on every GitHub push, connect the service to your repository with railway service source connect --repo <owner>/<repo> --branch <branch>.

Method 2: Deploy via Dashboard

1. Step 1

   Create a new project

   1. Go to Railway Dashboard
   2. Click "+ New" → "GitHub repo"
   3. Choose your repository
2. Step 2

   Add a PostgreSQL database, and connect this database to the service

   1. Click "+ New" → "Database" → "Add PostgreSQL"
   2. After Railway creates the database, select your service (not the database)
   3. Go to "Variables" tab
   4. Click "+ New Variable" → "Add Reference"
   5. Select DATABASE_URL from postgres
3. Step 3

   Generate a public domain

   1. Select your service
   2. Go to "Settings" tab
   3. Under "Networking", click "Generate Domain"

Your app is now live. Railway auto-deploys on every GitHub push.

Configuration (Optional)

By default, Railway uses Railpack to automatically detect and build your Bun application with zero configuration.

Railpack detects Bun from your bun.lock and installs the latest version of Bun unless you pin one with the engines.bun or packageManager field in package.json. Railway's previous builder, Nixpacks, is in maintenance mode.

If your service still builds with Nixpacks, switch it to Railpack by adding the following to your railway.json:

{
  "$schema": "https://railway.com/railway.schema.json",
  "build": {
    "builder": "RAILPACK"
  }
}

For more build configuration settings, see the Railway documentation.