Self-Hosting

Self-Hosting with Docker

Learn how to configure and deploy Supabase with Docker.

Docker is the easiest way to get started with self-hosted Supabase. It should only take you a few minutes to get up and running. This guide assumes you are running the command from the machine you intend to host from.

Contents

  1. Before you begin
  2. Installing and running Supabase
  3. Accessing your services
  4. Updating your services
  5. Securing your services

Before you begin

You need the following installed in your system: Git and Docker (Windows, MacOS, or Linux).

Installing and running Supabase

Follow these steps to start Supabase on your machine:


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# Get the code
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git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/supabase/supabase
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# Go to the docker folder
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cd supabase/docker
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# Copy the fake env vars
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cp .env.example .env
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# Pull the latest images
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docker compose pull
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# Start the services (in detached mode)
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docker compose up -d

After all the services have started you can see them running in the background:


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docker compose ps

All of the services should have a status running (healthy). If you see a status like created but not running, try starting that service manually with docker compose start <service-name>.

Accessing Supabase Studio

You can access Supabase Studio through the API gateway on port 8000. For example: http://<your-ip>:8000, or localhost:8000 if you are running Docker locally.

You will be prompted for a username and password. By default, the credentials are:

  • Username: supabase
  • Password: this_password_is_insecure_and_should_be_updated

You should change these credentials as soon as possible using the instructions below.

Accessing the APIs

Each of the APIs are available through the same API gateway:

  • REST: http://<your-ip>:8000/rest/v1/
  • Auth: http://<your-domain>:8000/auth/v1/
  • Storage: http://<your-domain>:8000/storage/v1/
  • Realtime: http://<your-domain>:8000/realtime/v1/

Accessing your Edge Functions

Edge Functions are stored in volumes/functions. The default setup has a hello Function that you can invoke on http://<your-domain>:8000/functions/v1/hello.

You can add new Functions as volumes/functions/<FUNCTION_NAME>/index.ts. Restart the functions service to pick up the changes: docker compose restart functions --no-deps

Accessing Postgres

By default, the Supabase stack runs the Supavisor connection pooler. Supavisor provides efficient management of database connections.

You can connect to the Postgres database using the following methods:

  1. For session-based connections (equivalent to direct PostgreSQL connections):

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psql 'postgres://postgres.your-tenant-id:your-super-secret-and-long-postgres-password@localhost:5432/postgres'

  1. For pooled transactional connections:

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psql 'postgres://postgres.your-tenant-id:your-super-secret-and-long-postgres-password@localhost:6543/postgres'

The default tenant ID is your-tenant-id, and the default password is your-super-secret-and-long-postgres-password. You should change these as soon as possible using the instructions below.

By default, the database is not accessible from outside the local machine but the pooler is. You can change this by updating the docker-compose.yml file.

Updating your services

For security reasons, we "pin" the versions of each service in the docker-compose file (these versions are updated ~monthly). If you want to update any services immediately, you can do so by updating the version number in the docker compose file and then running docker compose pull. You can find all the latest docker images in the Supabase Docker Hub.

You should update your services frequently to get the latest features and bug fixes and security patches. Note that you will need to restart the services to pick up the changes, which will result in some downtime for your services.

Example You'll want to update the Studio(Dashboard) frequently to get the latest features and bug fixes. To update the Dashboard:

  1. Visit the supabase/studio image in the Supabase Docker Hub
  2. Find the latest version (tag) number. It will look something like 20241029-46e1e40
  3. Update the image field in the docker-compose.yml file to the new version. It should look like this: image: supabase/studio:20241028-a265374
  4. Run docker compose pull and then docker compose up -d to restart the service with the new version.

Securing your services

While we provided you with some example secrets for getting started, you should NEVER deploy your Supabase setup using the defaults we have provided. Please follow all of the steps in this section to ensure you have a secure setup, and then restart all services to pick up the changes.

Generate API keys

We need to generate secure keys for accessing your services. We'll use the JWT Secret to generate anon and service API keys using the form below.

  1. Obtain a Secret: Use the 40-character secret provided, or create your own. If creating, ensure it's a strong, random string of 40 characters.
  2. Store Securely: Save the secret in a secure location on your local machine. Don't share this secret publicly or commit it to version control.
  3. Generate a JWT: Use the form below to generate a new JWT using your secret.

Update API keys

Run this form twice to generate new anon and service API keys. Replace the values in the ./docker/.env file:

  • ANON_KEY - replace with an anon key
  • SERVICE_ROLE_KEY - replace with a service key

You will need to restart the services for the changes to take effect.

Update secrets

Update the ./docker/.env file with your own secrets. In particular, these are required:

  • POSTGRES_PASSWORD: the password for the postgres role.
  • JWT_SECRET: used by PostgREST and GoTrue, among others.
  • SITE_URL: the base URL of your site.
  • SMTP_*: mail server credentials. You can use any SMTP server.
  • POOLER_TENANT_ID: the tenant-id that will be used by supavisor pooler for your connection string

You will need to restart the services for the changes to take effect.

Dashboard authentication

The Dashboard is protected with basic authentication. The default user and password MUST be updated before using Supabase in production. Update the following values in the ./docker/.env file:

  • DASHBOARD_USERNAME: The default username for the Dashboard
  • DASHBOARD_PASSWORD: The default password for the Dashboard

You can also add more credentials for multiple users in ./docker/volumes/api/kong.yml. For example:

docker/volumes/api/kong.yml

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basicauth_credentials:
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- consumer: DASHBOARD
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username: user_one
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password: password_one
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- consumer: DASHBOARD
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username: user_two
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password: password_two

You will need to restart the services for the changes to take effect.

Restarting all services

You can restart services to pick up any configuration changes by running:


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# Stop and remove the containers
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docker compose down
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# Recreate and start the containers
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docker compose up -d

Be aware that this will result in downtime. Simply restarting the services does not apply configuration changes.

Stopping all services

You can stop Supabase by running docker compose stop in same directory as your docker-compose.yml file.

Uninstalling

You can stop Supabase by running the following in same directory as your docker-compose.yml file:


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# Stop docker and remove volumes:
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docker compose down -v
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# Remove Postgres data:
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rm -rf volumes/db/data/

This will destroy all data in the database and storage volumes, so be careful!

Managing your secrets

Many components inside Supabase use secure secrets and passwords. These are listed in the self-hosting env file, but we strongly recommend using a secrets manager when deploying to production. Plain text files like dotenv lead to accidental costly leaks.

Some suggested systems include:

Advanced

Everything beyond this point in the guide helps you understand how the system works and how you can modify it to suit your needs.

Architecture

Supabase is a combination of open source tools, each specifically chosen for Enterprise-readiness.

If the tools and communities already exist, with an MIT, Apache 2, or equivalent open license, we will use and support that tool. If the tool doesn't exist, we build and open source it ourselves.

  • Kong is a cloud-native API gateway.
  • GoTrue is an JWT based API for managing users and issuing JWT tokens.
  • PostgREST is a web server that turns your PostgreSQL database directly into a RESTful API
  • Realtime is an Elixir server that allows you to listen to PostgreSQL inserts, updates, and deletes using websockets. Realtime polls Postgres' built-in replication functionality for database changes, converts changes to JSON, then broadcasts the JSON over websockets to authorized clients.
  • Storage provides a RESTful interface for managing Files stored in S3, using Postgres to manage permissions.
  • postgres-meta is a RESTful API for managing your Postgres, allowing you to fetch tables, add roles, and run queries, etc.
  • PostgreSQL is an object-relational database system with over 30 years of active development that has earned it a strong reputation for reliability, feature robustness, and performance.
  • Supavisor is a scalable connection pooler for Postgres, allowing for efficient management of database connections.

For the system to work cohesively, some services require additional configuration within the Postgres database. For example, the APIs and Auth system require several default roles and the pgjwt Postgres extension.

You can find all the default extensions inside the schema migration scripts repo. These scripts are mounted at /docker-entrypoint-initdb.d to run automatically when starting the database container.

Configuring services

Each system has a number of configuration options which can be found in the relevant product documentation.

These configuration items are generally added to the env section of each service, inside the docker-compose.yml section. If these configuration items are sensitive, they should be stored in a secret manager or using an .env file and then referenced using the ${} syntax.

docker-compose.yml
.env

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services:
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rest:
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image: postgrest/postgrest
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environment:
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PGRST_JWT_SECRET: ${JWT_SECRET}

Common configuration

Each system can be configured independently. Some of the most common configuration options are listed below.

Configuring an email server

You will need to use a production-ready SMTP server for sending emails. You can configure the SMTP server by updating the following environment variables:

.env

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SMTP_ADMIN_EMAIL=
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SMTP_HOST=
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SMTP_PORT=
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SMTP_USER=
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SMTP_PASS=
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SMTP_SENDER_NAME=

We recommend using AWS SES. It's extremely cheap and reliable. Restart all services to pick up the new configuration.

Configuring S3 Storage

By default all files are stored locally on the server. You can configure the Storage service to use S3 by updating the following environment variables:

docker-compose.yml

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storage:
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environment:
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STORAGE_BACKEND=s3
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GLOBAL_S3_BUCKET=name-of-your-s3-bucket
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REGION=region-of-your-s3-bucket

You can find all the available options in the storage repository. Restart the storage service to pick up the changes: docker compose restart storage --no-deps

Setting database's log_min_messages

By default, docker compose sets the database's log_min_messages configuration to fatal to prevent redundant logs generated by Realtime. You can configure log_min_messages using any of the Postgres Severity Levels.

Accessing Postgres through Supavisor

By default, the Postgres database is accessible through the Supavisor connection pooler. This allows for more efficient management of database connections. You can connect to the pooled database using the POOLER_PROXY_PORT_TRANSACTION port and POSTGRES_PORT for session based connections.

For more information on configuring and using Supavisor, see the Supavisor documentation.

Exposing your Postgres database

If you need direct access to the Postgres database without going through Supavisor, you can expose it by updating the docker-compose.yml file:

docker-compose.yml

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# Comment or remove the supavisor section of the docker-compose file
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# supavisor:
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# ports:
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# ...
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db:
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ports:
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- ${POSTGRES_PORT}:${POSTGRES_PORT}

This is less-secure, so please make sure you are running a firewall in front of your server.

File storage backend on macOS

By default, Storage backend is set to file, which is to use local files as the storage backend. For macOS compatibility, you need to choose VirtioFS as the Docker container file sharing implementation (in Docker Desktop -> Preferences -> General).

Setting up logging with the Analytics server

Additional configuration is required for self-hosting the Analytics server. For the full setup instructions, see Self Hosting Analytics.

Upgrading Analytics

Due to the changes in the Analytics server, you will need to run the following commands to upgrade your Analytics server:


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### Destroy analytics to transition to postgres self hosted solution without other data loss
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# Enter the container and use your .env POSTGRES_PASSWORD value to login
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docker exec -it $(docker ps | grep supabase-db | awk '{print $1}') psql -U supabase_admin --password
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# Drop all the data in the _analytics schema
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DROP PUBLICATION logflare_pub; DROP SCHEMA _analytics CASCADE; CREATE SCHEMA _analytics;\q
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# Drop the analytics container
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docker rm supabase-analytics

Demo

A minimal setup working on Ubuntu, hosted on DigitalOcean.

Demo using DigitalOcean

  1. A DigitalOcean Droplet with 1 GB memory and 25 GB solid-state drive (SSD) is sufficient to start
  2. To access the Dashboard, use the ipv4 IP address of your Droplet.
  3. If you're unable to access Dashboard, run docker compose ps to see if the Studio service is running and healthy.