This guide will help you get started with self hosting Aptabase. You can alternatively use our Cloud Hosting for a zero maintenance and fully managed solution.
All you need is to have a recent version of Docker as this guide uses Docker Compose.
- Clone this repository
git clone https://github.com/aptabase/self-hosting- Create a
.envfile next todocker-compose.ymlwith a privateAUTH_SECRET. This value signs the sign-in links, so it must be unique to your instance and never copied from an example:
echo "AUTH_SECRET=$(openssl rand -base64 32)" > .envAptabase refuses to start when AUTH_SECRET is missing, shorter than 32 characters, or equal to a publicly known example value.
-
Modify the
docker-compose.ymlfile to your liking, but especially the sections with comments as the default values are just dummy examples. -
Run the following command to start the services:
docker-compose up -d- That's it! You can now access Aptabase at
http://localhost:8000🎉
Note: By default, Aptabase is not configured to send email via SMTP . You can either see the emails in the logs or add the relevant SMTP variables in the docker-compose.yml file. A list of all Environment Variables is available here.
If that's not working, please check the logs with
docker-compose logs -fand make sure there are no errors.
The ClickHouse image was moved from 23.8 to 26.8.36.3 to fix CVE-2026-116366 (unauthenticated remote code execution). Existing data volumes upgrade in place on the next docker compose up -d, but once 26.8 has written data you cannot go back to 23.x, so take a backup of the events-db-data volume first.
There is no default login. Once you are able to access your self-hosted instance, you need to create/register a new account. After registering, the activation link that is required to activate it will be in the container logs. Once you follow that link, your new account will be active, and you will be able to access Aptabase in its entirity.
