Railbase
GPTClaude

Quickstart

Download, run, create an admin, and install your first plugin.

Updated

Video guide —watch on YouTube ↗

This guide takes you from nothing to a running Railbase with a paid plugin installed. It takes a few minutes and assumes a local machine; production hardening is covered in Deployment.

1. Download the binary

Grab the build for your platform from the download page. It's a single executable — there is nothing else to install. On macOS / Linux, make it runnable:

chmod +x ./railbase

2. Create the first admin

Create your superuser before starting the server. The email is a positional argument; you'll be prompted for a password (twice). The command creates the data store on first use, and the vault won't unlock without a password — locally, set RAILBASE_DEV=true to use the built-in development key:

RAILBASE_DEV=true ./railbase admin create you@example.com

Important

The vault is a single file opened by one process at a time. Commands that open it (admin, backup, jobs, …) can't run while serve holds the lock — they exit with "vault: file is locked by another process". Create the admin first (as here), or stop the server for a moment. On a running instance you can also create the first admin from the /_/bootstrap setup wizard instead.

3. Run it

RAILBASE_DEV=true ./railbase serve

With no other flags, Railbase:

  • listens on http://localhost:8095
  • keeps its data store at ./pb_data/railbase.vault (a single encrypted file)
  • serves the admin console at http://localhost:8095/_/

Important

In production you set a real RAILBASE_VAULT_PASSWORD instead of RAILBASE_DEV=true. A bare serve with neither exits with "no vault password configured". See Installation.

Tip

Use a different port or data directory with flags: RAILBASE_DEV=true ./railbase serve --addr :9000 --data-dir ./demo. See the CLI reference.

Now open http://localhost:8095/_/ and sign in. (Two-factor authentication is self-service — enroll it under your account settings once you're in.)

Try it: Sign in to the admin console

  1. Open the admin console. On a fresh instance you land on the sign-in screen. go to /_/login
  2. Enter the admin email you just created. type “admin@example.com” into Email
  3. And the password. type “AdminP@ss123” into Password
  4. Sign in. click “Sign in”
  5. And you're in. This is your home base — collections, logs, and settings, all one click away. go to /_/
  6. Your collections, audit events, and live request rates, all at a glance. hover Collections

4. Open the marketplace

The in-app marketplace is built in and on by default — there's nothing to enable. Open Marketplace in your admin (/_/) and you're browsing the live catalogue from railbase.app.

Note

The marketplace always pulls from railbase.app — the catalogue, prices, and checkout are served there. To add a plugin to a build you compile yourself instead, see Installing plugins.

5. Buy or trial, and install a plugin

Open the Marketplace and pick a plugin. The flow is entirely in-product:

  1. Browse — the catalogue, prices, and per-seat terms are synced live from railbase.app.
  2. Buy or try free — checkout is embedded right in the page; enter your card in the secure payment form (served by railbase.app; card data never touches your server). Where a plugin offers a trial, Try free starts a time-boxed trial with no card.
  3. Install — your instance pulls the plugin, verifies it's authentic and unmodified, and starts it as a managed process.

No download, no file to copy, no redeploy. The plugin's tables, routes, and jobs are live the moment it registers.

Note

Pricing is per seat, where a seat is a user holding a billable role. Viewers and self-service users are free. See Licensing & seats.

Next steps

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