Self-host Node-RED
A flow-based programming tool for event-driven applications: a browser editor where you wire together nodes from a palette, on a light Node.js runtime that is equally at home on a Raspberry Pi and in the cloud. Originally built by IBM's Emerging Technology Services team, now an OpenJS Foundation project under Apache-2.0 with thousands of community-contributed nodes. It is the pick for MQTT, hardware and event plumbing more than for SaaS-to-SaaS automation — and its editor ships with no login until you configure one.
Key facts
Pick Node-RED when the automation is about events, devices and protocols — MQTT, serial ports, home automation, industrial data — rather than SaaS-to-SaaS integration. It is Apache-2.0 under the OpenJS Foundation with no paid edition and nothing behind a license key, runs on a Raspberry Pi as happily as on a VPS, and has thousands of community-contributed nodes. Treat the 256 MB on this page as our estimate; the project publishes no floor.
What you need
- Any VPS with at least 256 MB of RAM
- A domain you control — most self-hosted setups need HTTPS in front of them
- Under an hour if you've used Docker before
Paid link — we earn a commission if you shop through it.
Install
Run these commands on your server:
# Node-RED — the project's own image (nodered/node-red); flows and settings persist in the /data volume
docker run -d --name nodered --restart unless-stopped \
-p 1880:1880 -v node_red_data:/data \
nodered/node-red
# open http://SERVER_IP:1880
# The editor is NOT secured by default: anyone who can reach the port can deploy flows.
# Set adminAuth in the volume's settings.js (hash a password with `node-red admin hash-pw`) before exposing it.What you take on
Node-RED is small and dependable, but it assumes you will finish securing it. The one caveat that matters, and two smaller ones:
