This page walks you through the process of getting the budibase platform up and running.
Budibase is open source, self hosted software.
You only have to set up your budibase instance once. Once your instance is up and running, other members of your team can build and interact with budibase simply by accessing the URL that you have hosted your budibase instance on.
We do not generally recommend self-hosting software and managing your own infrastructure if this is the case. We also offer a hosted cloud sandbox that will allow users to use budibase in their browser without any setup or self-hosting. You can sign up and use the cloud platform here:
To complete this guide, you must have docker and docker compose installed on your machine. Follow the instructions for downloading docker for Windows, Mac, and Linux machines.
Docker is a platform that makes it much easier to automate the running of software programs. It allows us to provide a smooth and consistent budibase experience across all the major operating systems.
For those setting up docker/docker-compose in a Linux environment it is worth checking that your permissions are setup correctly before attempting to continue - more details about this can be found here in the docker documentation.
There are several ways to set up budibase. Please choose the best one suited for you!
The simplest way to get budibase up and running self-hosted is to use our one click digitalocean installation. This will create your very own self hosted budibase installation running in digitalocean, without any configuration at all.
The budibase CLI provides the tools you need to set up, update and manage your budibase installation.
Follow the guide below to install it. You can install the CLI with NPM, or you can download one of the binaries we provide instead.
We do recommend the Budibase CLI setup for production installations, as it contains features that allow you to easily update your cluster and manage all aspects of your budibase installation.
If you don't want to install NodeJS or the CLI and just want to jump in with the docker-compose files and run budibase yourself using docker, you can follow the guide below.
You can run and provision budibase on a kubernetes cluster using our helm chart. Follow the guide below to find out how.
Your budibase installation should now be up and running. Go to the URL of your new installation to start using budibase!
Every budibase installation must have an admin user. This user is responsible for the administration of the budibase installation, and has total control over all aspects of budibase. Enter the admin and password for your admin user, and click "Create admin user".
You will then be asked to log in with your new admin user.
After you log in, you will be taken to the budibase portal. The portal is where budibase users manage their apps, configuration settings, and much more.
The basic budibase setup is now complete. You have reached the summit of this mountain, and the end of this guide. You can now create your first budibase app by following the prompt on screen. You can find information about building apps with budibase throughout the rest of the budibase documentation.
There are a few things however, that will enhance your budibase experience.
Set up email/SMTP here.
Set up NGINX or caddy to sit in front of your budibase installation here.
If you want to receive those sweet, sweet updates. You can update your budibase installation using the budibase CLI. Simply run the following to get the latest and greatest.
The budibase CLI is how you initialise, manage and update your budibase installation.
Downloading the Budibase CLI is a fairly straight forward process. If you have NodeJS installed, you can simply run the following to install the budibase CLI:
Alternatively, you can just download the budibase CLI for your operating system here:
If you do download from the above links, the steps are slightly different compared to downloading the CLI from NPM. After downloading the CLI, you will have to make it executable. Let's take the cli-linux for example:
When following the rest of this guide, when you see the budi command being used, you will need to replace it with:
Once the CLI is installed, navigate to the directory where you would like to store the files for your budibase installation, and run:
If you have an ARM based CPU, you will have to make a slight update to your docker-compose.yaml . Update the couchdb-service part of your compose config with platform: amd64
You can now start the budibase services with the following command.