Bun Deploy a Bun application on Railway

Deploy a Bun application on Railway

Deploy Bun applications to Railway with this step-by-step guide covering CLI and dashboard methods, optional PostgreSQL setup, and automatic SSL configuration.

Railway is an infrastructure platform where you can provision infrastructure, develop with that infrastructure locally, and then deploy to the cloud. It enables instant deployments from GitHub with zero configuration, automatic SSL, and built-in database provisioning.

This guide walks through deploying a Bun application with a PostgreSQL database (optional), which is exactly what the template below provides.

You can either follow this guide step-by-step or simply 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

```bash terminal icon="terminal" theme={"theme":{"light":"github-light","dark":"dracula"}}
bun install -g @railway/cli
```

```bash terminal icon="terminal" theme={"theme":{"light":"github-light","dark":"dracula"}}
railway login
```

```bash terminal icon="terminal" theme={"theme":{"light":"github-light","dark":"dracula"}}
railway init
```

<Note>Step 4 is only necessary if your application uses a database. If you don't need PostgreSQL, skip to Step 5.</Note>

```bash terminal icon="terminal" theme={"theme":{"light":"github-light","dark":"dracula"}}
# 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}}
```

```bash terminal icon="terminal" theme={"theme":{"light":"github-light","dark":"dracula"}}
# Deploy your application
railway up

# Generate public domain
railway domain
```

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

Method 2: Deploy via Dashboard

1. Go to [Railway Dashboard](http://railway.com/dashboard?utm_medium=integration\&utm_source=docs\&utm_campaign=bun)
2. Click **"+ New"** → **"GitHub repo"**
3. Choose your repository

<Note>Step 2 is only necessary if your application uses a database. If you don't need PostgreSQL, skip to Step 3.</Note>

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

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 Nixpacks to automatically detect and build your Bun application with zero configuration.

However, using the Railpack application builder provides better Bun support, and will always support the latest version of Bun. The pre-configured templates use Railpack by default.

To enable Railpack in a custom project, add the following to your railway.json:

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

For more build configuration settings, check out the Railway documentation.