PocketBase on Railway

Back in 2022, PocketBase, the wonderful open-source Go backend that packs a database, auth, file storage, and an admin UI into a single binary, was still young, and getting a hosted instance running took more fiddling than it should have. So I wrote a tiny repo to fix that: a clean Dockerfile, a docker-compose setup, and a one-click “Deploy on Railway” template.

It’s one of the simplest yet most impactful things I’ve shipped, barely any code, but it let a lot of people go from zero to a live PocketBase backend in a single click. It picked up 11 stars and 5 forks from people doing exactly that. It’s no longer maintained (PocketBase has its own deployment story now), but it still works and the pattern holds up.

How you can use it

• One click: hit the Deploy on Railway button in the repo and you get a running PocketBase instance, no local setup.
• Docker: docker build --tag pocketbase . && docker run pocketbase.
• Compose: docker-compose build && docker-compose up -d pocketbase.

It’s a nice reference for anyone who wants to self-host PocketBase or understand how to wrap a single-binary service into a portable, one-click deployment. See the repo.