Skip to main content

n8n setup

Follow n8n’s installation documentation for the latest image tags and options. Below is a concise production-oriented summary.

Prerequisites​

n8n publishes images at docker.n8n.io/n8nio/n8n. The docs show stable vs beta tracks; use stable for production (Docker page).

Single-container quick start​

Create a volume and run n8n (replace the timezone):

docker volume create n8n_data

docker run -it --rm \
  --name n8n \
  -p 5678:5678 \
  -e GENERIC_TIMEZONE="America/New_York" \
  -e TZ="America/New_York" \
  -e N8N_ENFORCE_SETTINGS_FILE_PERMISSIONS=true \
  -e N8N_RUNNERS_ENABLED=true \
  -v n8n_data:/home/node/.n8n \
  docker.n8n.io/n8nio/n8n

Open http://localhost:5678. The official example enables runners and settings file permissions enforcement—keep these for new deployments unless you have a reason not to (source).

Persistence: The /home/node/.n8n volume holds encryption material, logs, and other state—even when using PostgreSQL, n8n still recommends persisting this directory (Docker page).

PostgreSQL (Docker run)​

For PostgreSQL, set DB_TYPE=postgresdb and the DB_POSTGRESDB_* variables. Example skeleton:

docker run -d \
  --name n8n \
  -p 5678:5678 \
  -e TZ="America/New_York" \
  -e GENERIC_TIMEZONE="America/New_York" \
  -e N8N_ENFORCE_SETTINGS_FILE_PERMISSIONS=true \
  -e N8N_RUNNERS_ENABLED=true \
  -e DB_TYPE=postgresdb \
  -e DB_POSTGRESDB_DATABASE=<DB_NAME> \
  -e DB_POSTGRESDB_HOST=<HOST> \
  -e DB_POSTGRESDB_PORT=5432 \
  -e DB_POSTGRESDB_USER=<USER> \
  -e DB_POSTGRESDB_PASSWORD=<PASSWORD> \
  -e DB_POSTGRESDB_SCHEMA=<SCHEMA> \
  -v n8n_data:/home/node/.n8n \
  docker.n8n.io/n8nio/n8n

Official Compose examples live in the n8n-hosting repository (e.g. docker-compose/withPostgres).

Docker Compose​

Compose is the usual production baseline: n8n + Postgres + reverse proxy (see Deploy). Pull updates with:

docker compose pull
docker compose down
docker compose up -d

(Updating Compose)

Local npm (development)​

For UI or node development, some teams run from source or npm; do not treat dev setups as production—tunnel features and dev defaults are unsafe for the internet (tunnel warning).

Next steps​