Self-Hosting

Deploy Sim on your own infrastructure with Docker or Kubernetes.

Requirements

Resource	Small	Standard	Production
CPU	2 cores	4 cores	8+ cores
RAM	12 GB	16 GB	32+ GB
Storage	20 GB SSD	50 GB SSD	100+ GB SSD
Docker	20.10+	20.10+	Latest

Small: Development, testing, single user (1-5 users) Standard: Teams (5-50 users), moderate workloads Production: Large teams (50+ users), high availability, heavy workflow execution

Resource requirements are driven by workflow execution (isolated-vm sandboxing), file processing (in-memory document parsing), and vector operations (pgvector). Memory is typically the constraining factor rather than CPU — both the Helm chart and the compose file request 4 Gi for the app and cap it at 8 Gi.

Quick Start

git clone https://github.com/simstudioai/sim.git && cd sim

cat > .env << EOF
BETTER_AUTH_SECRET=$(openssl rand -hex 32)
ENCRYPTION_KEY=$(openssl rand -hex 32)
INTERNAL_API_SECRET=$(openssl rand -hex 32)
CRON_SECRET=$(openssl rand -hex 32)
EOF

docker compose -f docker-compose.prod.yml up -d

Open http://localhost:3000

The .env step is not optional — the compose file refuses to start without the first three rather than booting with empty values. CRON_SECRET is what the scheduler uses; without it the cron service exits with instructions and everything else still runs. See Docker for the full production setup.

Deployment Options

Docker

Deploy with Docker Compose on any server

Kubernetes

Deploy with Helm on Kubernetes clusters

Cloud Platforms

Railway, DigitalOcean, AWS, Azure, GCP guides

Which one to pick

Both deploy the same feature set. Docker Compose is the fastest way to evaluate Sim and is fine for a single-node team install; Kubernetes is the path for high availability and managed secrets.

Capability	Docker Compose	Kubernetes (Helm)
App, realtime, migrations, Postgres, Redis	Yes	Yes
Scheduled workflows and polling triggers	Yes — `cron` service	Yes — 18 CronJobs
Horizontal scaling / HA	No (single node)	Yes (`replicaCount`, HPA, PDB)
Managed secrets (Vault, ESO, cloud KMS)	Manual `.env`	Yes
Network policy, Pod Security Standards	Host-level only	Yes
PII redaction, OpenTelemetry collector	Not bundled	Optional components

The remaining differences are inherent to the platform — Compose has no analogue of a HorizontalPodAutoscaler or a PodDisruptionBudget. Application behavior is the same on both.

Where to go next

Integrations & OAuth

Required before any integration works — start here

Object Storage

Required before storing anything you care about

Verify Your Install

Ten-minute smoke test across every subsystem

The sidebar covers the rest: architecture, email, Redis, authentication, background jobs, networking, security, scaling, observability, and upgrades.

Enterprise Features

Organizations, SSO, permission groups, audit logs, whitelabeling, session policies, data retention, and data drains all run on a self-hosted deployment with no billing or subscription. Turn the set on with:

ENTERPRISE_ENABLED=true
NEXT_PUBLIC_ENTERPRISE_ENABLED=true

Your deployment also needs an organization model for most of them to apply. The self-hosted enterprise guide covers both patterns, the per-feature flags, and troubleshooting.

External dependencies to plan for

Sim is self-contained for the core editor and execution engine. A few features reach outside the deployment:

Feature	Requires	Notes
Knowledge bases	An OpenAI, Azure OpenAI, or Gemini API key	Embeddings are generated by a hosted provider, selected with `KB_EMBEDDING_MODEL` (`text-embedding-3-small` by default). There is no local embedding backend — knowledge bases are unavailable without one of these keys.
Agent blocks	An API key for at least one model provider	Or a self-hosted OpenAI-compatible endpoint: Ollama, vLLM, or LiteLLM.
Chat module	`COPILOT_API_KEY` from sim.ai	Set `NEXT_PUBLIC_CHAT_DISABLED=true` to hide the module instead.
Integrations	Your own OAuth app per service	See Integrations & OAuth.
Remote Function / Pi execution	Optional E2B or Daytona key	Without one, JavaScript Function code that has no `import` or `require` still runs in the in-process isolated VM. Python, Shell, JavaScript with external imports, custom Function Sandboxes, and Pi require a configured remote provider. See Security.

Common Questions

At minimum you need 2 CPU cores, 12 GB RAM, 20 GB SSD storage, and Docker 20.10 or later. Memory is typically the constraining factor due to workflow execution (isolated-vm sandboxing), file processing, and vector operations (pgvector).

Three secrets are required: BETTER_AUTH_SECRET (authentication), ENCRYPTION_KEY (data encryption), and INTERNAL_API_SECRET (service-to-service auth). Generate each with openssl rand -hex 32. You also need to set NEXT_PUBLIC_APP_URL and BETTER_AUTH_URL to your domain.

Yes. Sim supports Ollama for local model inference. Use docker-compose.ollama.yml instead of docker-compose.prod.yml. It offers both GPU (with NVIDIA support) and CPU-only profiles, and automatically pulls gemma3:4b as a starter model.