Deployment

Page summary:

Deployment options cover hardware/software prerequisites, environment variable setup, and building the admin panel before launch. In the documentation: links to provider‑specific and advanced guides to help pick the right hosting strategy.

Strapi provides many deployment options for your project or application. Your Strapi applications can be deployed on traditional hosting servers or your preferred hosting provider.

The following documentation covers the basics of how to prepare Strapi for deployment on with several common hosting options.

Strapi Cloud

You can use Strapi Cloud to quickly deploy and host your project.

Tip

If you already created a content structure with the Content-Type Builder and added some data through the Content Manager to your local (development) Strapi instance, you can leverage the data management system to transfer data from a Strapi instance to another one.

Another possible workflow is to first create the content structure locally, push your project to a git-based repository, deploy the changes to production, and only then add content to the production instance.

Caution

For self-hosted Kubernetes deployments, we recommend using npm rather than pnpm. pnpm aggressive hoisting of dependencies can break native modules, such as mysql2— that your application may rely on. npm flatter, more predictable node_modules layout helps ensure native packages load correctly.

General guidelines

Hardware and software requirements

To provide the best possible environment for Strapi the following requirements apply to development (local) and staging and production workflows.

Before installing Strapi, the following requirements must be installed on your computer:

• Node.js: Only Active LTS or Maintenance LTS versions are supported (currently v20, v22, and v24). Odd-number releases of Node, known as "current" versions of Node.js, are not supported (e.g. v23, v25).
• Your preferred Node.js package manager:
  • npm (v6 and above)
  • pnpm
• Python (if using a SQLite database)

• Standard build tools for your OS (the build-essentials package on most Debian-based systems)

• Hardware specifications for your server (CPU, RAM, storage):

  Hardware	Recommended	Minimum
  CPU	2+ cores	1 core
  Memory	4GB+	2GB
  Disk	32GB+	8GB

• A supported database version:

Database	Recommended	Minimum
MySQL	8.4	8.0
MariaDB	11.4	10.3
PostgreSQL	17.0	14.0
SQLite	3	3

Strapi does not support MongoDB (or any NoSQL databases), nor does it support any "Cloud Native" databases (e.g., Amazon Aurora, Google Cloud SQL, etc.).

Database deployment

Deploying databases along with Strapi is covered in the databases guide.

• A supported operating system:

  Operating System	Recommended	Minimum
  Ubuntu (LTS)	24.04	20.04
  Debian	11.x	10.x
  RHEL	10.x	8.x
  macOS	26.0	11.x
  Windows Desktop	11	10
  Windows Server	Not Supported	Not Supported

Application Configuration

1. Configure

We recommend using environment variables to configure your application based on the environment, for example:

/config/server.js

module.exports = ({ env }) => ({
  host: env('HOST', '0.0.0.0'),
  port: env.int('PORT', 1337),
});

Strapi generates a .env file with default values when you create a new project. You can edit this file or set variables in your chosen deployment platform (see example .env file):

HOST=10.0.0.1
PORT=1338

Tip

To learn more about configuration details, see the configurations documentation.

2. Launch the server

Before running your server in production you need to build your admin panel for production:

yarn

terminal

BASH

NODE_ENV=production yarn build

npm

terminal

BASH

NODE_ENV=production npm run build

windows

terminal

BASH

npm install cross-env

Then in your package.json scripts section:

terminal

BASH

"build:win": "cross-env NODE_ENV=production npm run build",

And run:

terminal

BASH

npm run build:win

Run the server with the production settings:

yarn

terminal

BASH

NODE_ENV=production yarn start

npm

terminal

BASH

NODE_ENV=production npm run start

windows

terminal

BASH

npm install cross-env

Then in your package.json scripts section:

terminal

BASH

"start:win": "cross-env NODE_ENV=production npm start",

And run:

terminal

BASH

npm run start:win

Caution

We highly recommend using pm2 to manage your process.

If you need a server.js file to be able to run node server.js instead of npm run start then create a ./server.js file as follows:

path: ./server.js

const strapi = require('@strapi/strapi');
strapi.createStrapi(/* {...} */).start();

Caution

If you are developing a TypeScript-based project you must provide the distDir option to start the server. For more information, consult the TypeScript documentation.

Health check endpoint

Strapi exposes a lightweight health check route at /_health for uptime monitors and load balancers. When the server is ready, it responds with an HTTP 204 No Content status and a strapi: You are so French! header value, which you can use to confirm the application is reachable.

Advanced configurations

If you want to host the administration on another server than the API, please take a look at this dedicated section.

Additional resources

Prerequisites

• Your Strapi project is created and its code is hosted on GitHub.
• You have read the general deployment guidelines.

The integrations page of the Strapi website include information on how to integrate Strapi with many resources, including how to deploy Strapi on the following 3rd-party platforms:

Deploy Strapi on AWS

Deploy Strapi on Azure

Deploy Strapi on DigitalOcean App Platform

Deploy Strapi on Heroku

In addition, community-maintained guides for additional providers are available in the Strapi Forum. This includes the following guides:

Proxying with Caddy

Proxying with HAProxy

Proxying with NGinx

Using the PM2 process manager

The following external guide(s), not officially maintained by Strapi, might also help deploy Strapi on various environments:

[Microsoft Community] Deploying on Azure

Multi-tenancy

If you're looking for multi-tenancy options, the Strapi Blog has a comprehensive guide.