Self-Hosting with Docker

Docker is the easiest way to get started with self-hosted Supabase.

Before you begin#

You need the following installed in your system:

Docker and docker compose
Git

Quick Start#

Get the code#

Checkout the docker directory in the Supabase repo:

# Get the code
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/supabase/supabase

# Go to the docker folder
cd supabase/docker

# Copy the fake env vars
cp .env.example .env

# Start
docker compose up

Now visit http://localhost:3000 to start using Supabase Studio.

Securing your setup#

While we provided you with some example secrets for getting started, you should NEVER deploy your Supabase setup using the defaults we have provided.

Follow these steps to secure your Docker setup. We strongly recommend using a secrets manager when deploying to production.

Generate API Keys#

Use your JWT_SECRET to generate a anon and service API keys using the JWT generator.

Replace the values in these files:

.env:
- ANON_KEY - replace with an anon key
- SERVICE_ROLE_KEY - replace with a service key
volumes/api/kong.yml
- anon - replace with an anon key
- service_role - replace with a service key

Update Secrets#

Update the .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.

Securing the Dashboard#

The Docker setup doesn't include a management database for managing users and logins. If you plan to deploy the Studio to the web we suggest you put it behind a web proxy with Basic Auth or hide it behind a VPN.

Configuration#

Each system can be configured to suit your particular use-case.

To keep the setup simple, we made some choices that may not be optimal for production:

the database is in the same machine as the servers
Storage uses the filesystem backend instead of S3
Auth should be configured with a production-ready SMTP server

Using an external database#

We strongly recommend decoupling your database from docker-compose before deploying. The middleware will run with any PostgreSQL database that has logical replication enabled. The following environment variables should be updated in the .env file to point to your external database:

POSTGRES_PASSWORD=your-super-secret-and-long-postgres-password

POSTGRES_HOST=db
POSTGRES_DB=postgres
POSTGRES_USER=postgres
POSTGRES_PORT=5432

Once you have done this, you can safely comment out the db section of the docker-compose file, and remove any instances where the services depends_on the db image.

Supabase services require your external database to be initialized with a specific schema. Refer to our postgres/migrations repository for instructions on running these migrations.

Note that you need superuser permission on the postgres role to perform the initial schema migration. Once completed, the postgres role will be demoted to non-superuser to prevent abuse.

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. However, you might miss important log messages such as database errors. Configure log_min_messages based on your needs.

File storage backend on macOS#

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

Deploying#

See the following guides to deploy Docker Compose setup using your preferred tool and platform:

Next steps#

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