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. The Helm chart requests 4 Gi for the app and caps it at 8 Gi; docker-compose.prod.yml sets only an 8 GB limit, with no reservation.

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=$(openssl rand -hex 32)
API_ENCRYPTION_KEY=$(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

Docker Compose and Kubernetes run the same application; what differs is the operational envelope around it, which the table below sets out. Cloud Platforms covers provider-specific notes for either. 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 — 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

Configure OAuth applications for the services you use

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, or an Ollama server	Embeddings are generated by the model named in `KB_EMBEDDING_MODEL` (`text-embedding-3-small` by default). Set it to `ollama/<model>` with `OLLAMA_URL` to embed locally instead. `EMBEDDING_OUTPUT_DIMS` sets the vector width.
Agent blocks	An API key for at least one model provider	Or a self-hosted OpenAI-compatible endpoint: Ollama, vLLM, LM Studio, or LiteLLM.
Chat module	`COPILOT_API_KEY` from sim.ai	Set `NEXT_PUBLIC_CHAT_DISABLED=true` to hide the module instead.
OAuth integrations	Your own OAuth app per service	See Integrations & OAuth.
Remote Function / Pi execution	Optional E2B or Daytona key, plus a Function base image	Plain JavaScript — no `import` or `require` — runs in the in-process isolated VM with nothing configured. Everything else needs both a provider key and an immutable Function base image: Python, Shell, imported JavaScript, custom Function Sandboxes, and any block that selects a sandbox or references a file path. Pi uses a separate image again, pinned with `E2B_PI_TEMPLATE_ID` or `DAYTONA_PI_SNAPSHOT_ID`. See Sandboxes.