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Railway is an infrastructure platform: you provision infrastructure, develop against it locally, then deploy to the cloud. It 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: Deploy on Railway
Prerequisites:
  • A Bun application ready for deployment
  • A Railway account
  • Railway CLI (for CLI deployment method)
  • A GitHub account (for Dashboard deployment method)

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Method 1: Deploy via CLI

1

Step 1

Install the Railway CLI.
terminal
bun install -g @railway/cli
2

Step 2

Log into your Railway account.
terminal
railway login
3

Step 3

After authenticating, initialize a new project.
terminal
railway init
4

Step 4

After initializing the project, add a new database and service.
Step 4 is only necessary if your application uses a database. If you don’t need PostgreSQL, skip to Step 5.
terminal
# 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 the services have been created and connected, 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.
terminal
# Deploy your application
railway up

# Generate public domain
railway domain
Your app is now live. Railway auto-deploys on every GitHub push.

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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
Step 2 is only necessary if your application uses a database. If you don’t need PostgreSQL, skip to Step 3.
  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
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.

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Configuration (Optional)

By default, Railway uses Nixpacks to automatically detect and build your Bun application with zero configuration. However, the Railpack application builder has better Bun support and always supports 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:
railway.json
{
  "$schema": "https://railway.com/railway.schema.json",
  "build": {
    "builder": "RAILPACK"
  }
}
For more build configuration settings, see the Railway documentation.