How to Self-Host Hoppscotch 2026

What Is Hoppscotch?

Hoppscotch is an open source API development platform — think Postman or Insomnia, but built as a web app, significantly faster, and fully self-hostable. It supports REST, GraphQL, WebSocket, SSE, Socket.IO, and MQTT in a single interface.

Postman's Team plan costs $14/user/month. Hoppscotch is free when self-hosted — your team shares collections, environments, and history on your own server.

Key features:

REST, GraphQL, WebSocket, SSE, MQTT clients
Team workspaces and shared collections
Environments (dev/staging/production variables)
Request history and sync across browsers
Pre-request scripts and test scripts (JavaScript)
OpenAPI/Swagger import
CLI for CI/CD testing (@hoppscotch/cli)
OIDC/SAML SSO support

Prerequisites

VPS with 1 vCPU, 1GB RAM (Hetzner CX22 ~€3.79/month works)
Docker + Docker Compose v2
Domain name with DNS pointing to your server
SMTP for email verification (required)
Google/GitHub OAuth app OR email-only setup

Docker Compose Setup

Hoppscotch has three components:

Frontend — the main web interface
Backend — API and database
Admin — user and instance management

1. Clone the Repo

git clone https://github.com/hoppscotch/hoppscotch
cd hoppscotch

2. Copy and Configure Environment

cp .env.example .env

Edit .env:

# .env

# --- Database ---
DATABASE_URL="postgresql://postgres:your-password@hoppscotch-db:5432/hoppscotch?connect_timeout=300"

# --- Auth tokens (generate strong random strings) ---
JWT_SECRET="$(openssl rand -hex 32)"
TOKEN_SALT_COMPLEXITY=10
MAGIC_LINK_TOKEN_VALIDITY=3
REFRESH_TOKEN_VALIDITY="604800000"  # 7 days in ms
ACCESS_TOKEN_VALIDITY="86400000"    # 1 day in ms

# --- App URLs ---
VITE_BASE_URL=https://api.yourdomain.com       # backend URL
VITE_SHORTCODE_BASE_URL=https://api.yourdomain.com
VITE_ADMIN_URL=https://admin.yourdomain.com
VITE_APP_TOS_LINK=
VITE_APP_PRIVACY_POLICY_LINK=

# --- Email (required for invite flows) ---
MAILER_SMTP_URL="smtps://username:password@smtp.yourdomain.com:465"
MAILER_ADDRESS_FROM="Hoppscotch <noreply@yourdomain.com>"

# --- OAuth (choose one or multiple) ---

# Google OAuth
GOOGLE_CLIENT_ID=your-google-client-id
GOOGLE_CLIENT_SECRET=your-google-client-secret
GOOGLE_CALLBACK_URL=https://api.yourdomain.com/v1/auth/google/callback
GOOGLE_SCOPE="email,profile"

# GitHub OAuth
GITHUB_CLIENT_ID=your-github-client-id
GITHUB_CLIENT_SECRET=your-github-client-secret
GITHUB_CALLBACK_URL=https://api.yourdomain.com/v1/auth/github/callback
GITHUB_SCOPE="user:email"

# Email/Password auth (optional, disables OAuth requirement)
ALLOW_SECURE_COOKIES=true

# --- Admin account ---
FIRST_ADMIN_EMAIL=your@email.com

3. docker-compose.yaml

version: "3.8"

networks:
  hoppscotch:

volumes:
  postgres_data:

services:
  hoppscotch-db:
    image: postgres:15
    restart: always
    volumes:
      - postgres_data:/var/lib/postgresql/data
    networks:
      - hoppscotch
    environment:
      POSTGRES_USER: postgres
      POSTGRES_PASSWORD: your-password
      POSTGRES_DB: hoppscotch

  hoppscotch-backend:
    image: hoppscotch/hoppscotch-backend:latest
    restart: always
    networks:
      - hoppscotch
    depends_on:
      - hoppscotch-db
    env_file: .env
    ports:
      - "3170:3170"  # backend API
      - "3000:3000"  # backend admin

  hoppscotch-app:
    image: hoppscotch/hoppscotch-app:latest
    restart: always
    networks:
      - hoppscotch
    env_file: .env
    ports:
      - "3020:8080"  # main app

  hoppscotch-admin:
    image: hoppscotch/hoppscotch-admin:latest
    restart: always
    networks:
      - hoppscotch
    env_file: .env
    ports:
      - "3100:8080"  # admin panel

4. Run Database Migrations

# First, start the database only
docker compose up -d hoppscotch-db

# Run migrations
docker compose run --rm hoppscotch-backend pnpx prisma migrate deploy

# Start everything
docker compose up -d

Configure Caddy Reverse Proxy

Hoppscotch uses three subdomains (or you can use path-based routing):

# /etc/caddy/Caddyfile

# Main app
app.yourdomain.com {
    reverse_proxy localhost:3020
}

# Backend API
api.yourdomain.com {
    reverse_proxy localhost:3170
}

# Admin panel
admin.yourdomain.com {
    reverse_proxy localhost:3100
}

systemctl reload caddy

Update your .env to match:

VITE_BASE_URL=https://api.yourdomain.com
VITE_ADMIN_URL=https://admin.yourdomain.com

Configure OAuth (Google)

Create Google OAuth App

1. Go to console.cloud.google.com
2. Create a new project (or use existing)
3. APIs & Services → Credentials → Create OAuth 2.0 Client
4. Application type: Web application
5. Authorized redirect URIs:
   https://api.yourdomain.com/v1/auth/google/callback
6. Copy Client ID and Client Secret

Add to .env:

GOOGLE_CLIENT_ID=123456-abc.apps.googleusercontent.com
GOOGLE_CLIENT_SECRET=GOCSPX-your-secret

GitHub OAuth

1. github.com → Settings → Developer settings → OAuth Apps → New OAuth App
2. Homepage URL: https://app.yourdomain.com
3. Authorization callback URL: https://api.yourdomain.com/v1/auth/github/callback
4. Generate client secret

Restart After OAuth Config

docker compose down && docker compose up -d

Visit https://admin.yourdomain.com:

1. Log in with the email matching FIRST_ADMIN_EMAIL
2. The admin dashboard shows user management, invites, and team settings
3. Enable/disable features: allow sign-ins, require invite, email allowlists

Invite your team:

Admin → Users → Invite Users
→ Enter email addresses
→ Team members receive magic link or OAuth invite

Use the CLI for CI/CD

Hoppscotch has a CLI for running API tests in your pipelines:

npm install -g @hoppscotch/cli

# Run a collection
hopp test path/to/collection.json \
  --env path/to/environment.json \
  --reporter-junit-export results.xml

Export a collection from Hoppscotch:

Collections → Right-click collection → Export → JSON

GitHub Actions Integration

# .github/workflows/api-tests.yml
name: API Tests

on: [push, pull_request]

jobs:
  test:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4

      - name: Install Hoppscotch CLI
        run: npm install -g @hoppscotch/cli

      - name: Run API Tests
        run: |
          hopp test collections/api-tests.json \
            --env environments/staging.json
        env:
          API_BASE_URL: ${{ vars.STAGING_URL }}
          API_KEY: ${{ secrets.API_KEY }}

Writing Test Scripts

Hoppscotch supports pre-request and post-request scripts (JavaScript):

// Post-request test script
pw.test("Status is 200", () => {
  pw.expect(pw.response.status).toBe(200);
});

pw.test("Response has user object", () => {
  const json = pw.response.body;
  pw.expect(json).toHaveProperty("id");
  pw.expect(json.email).toBeDefined();
});

// Set environment variable from response
const token = pw.response.body.token;
pw.env.set("AUTH_TOKEN", token);

This is the same pattern as Postman's test scripts — collections are portable.

Hoppscotch vs Postman vs Insomnia

Feature	Hoppscotch (self-hosted)	Postman	Insomnia
Price	~$5/mo server	$14/user/mo	$16/user/mo
Self-hosted	✅	❌	❌
REST client	✅	✅	✅
GraphQL	✅	✅	✅
WebSocket	✅	✅	✅
gRPC	❌	✅	✅
Team workspaces	✅	✅	✅
Environments	✅	✅	✅
Test scripts	✅	✅	✅
OpenAPI import	✅	✅	✅
CLI	✅	✅	✅
Speed	✅ Fast (web app)	⚠️ Electron	⚠️ Electron
Data ownership	✅ Full	❌	❌
Offline mode	⚠️ Limited	✅	✅

Backup Hoppscotch Data

#!/bin/bash
# backup-hoppscotch.sh
DATE=$(date +%Y%m%d_%H%M%S)
BACKUP_DIR="/backups/hoppscotch"

mkdir -p $BACKUP_DIR

# PostgreSQL backup
docker compose exec -T hoppscotch-db pg_dump \
  -U postgres hoppscotch | gzip > $BACKUP_DIR/db_$DATE.sql.gz

# Clean up old backups
find $BACKUP_DIR -mtime +14 -delete

echo "Hoppscotch backed up: $DATE"

Troubleshooting

Backend crashes with "Cannot connect to database":

docker compose logs hoppscotch-backend | head -30
# Ensure DATABASE_URL format: postgresql://user:pass@host:5432/db
# Check hoppscotch-db is healthy: docker compose ps

OAuth login fails:

# Check the callback URL matches exactly
# Google: "https://api.yourdomain.com/v1/auth/google/callback"
# No trailing slashes

# Test OAuth flow:
curl https://api.yourdomain.com/v1/auth/google

App loads but shows "Server unreachable":

# Check VITE_BASE_URL is set to the backend URL (not the app URL)
# App → Backend communication happens in the browser
# VITE_BASE_URL must be publicly accessible

Hoppscotch is a popular Postman alternative on OSSAlt — see all open source API development tools.

Why Self-Host Hoppscotch?

The case for self-hosting Hoppscotch comes down to three practical factors: data ownership, cost at scale, and operational control.

Data ownership is the fundamental argument. When you use a SaaS version of any tool, your data lives on someone else's infrastructure subject to their terms of service, their security practices, and their business continuity. If the vendor raises prices, gets acquired, changes API limits, or shuts down, you're left scrambling. Self-hosting Hoppscotch means your data and configuration stay on infrastructure you control — whether that's a VPS, a bare metal server, or a home lab.

Cost at scale matters once you move beyond individual use. Most SaaS equivalents charge per user or per data volume. A self-hosted instance on a $10-20/month VPS typically costs less than per-user SaaS pricing for teams of five or more — and the cost doesn't scale linearly with usage. One well-configured server handles dozens of users for a flat monthly fee.

Operational control is the third factor. The Docker Compose configuration above exposes every setting that commercial equivalents often hide behind enterprise plans: custom networking, environment variables, storage backends, and authentication integrations. You decide when to update, how to configure backups, and what access controls to apply.

The honest tradeoff: you're responsible for updates, backups, and availability. For teams running any production workloads, this is familiar territory. For individuals, the learning curve is real but the tooling (Docker, Caddy, automated backups) is well-documented and widely supported.

Server Requirements and Sizing

Before deploying Hoppscotch, assess your server capacity against expected workload.

Minimum viable setup: A 1 vCPU, 1GB RAM VPS with 20GB SSD is sufficient for personal use or small teams. Most consumer VPS providers — Hetzner, DigitalOcean, Linode, Vultr — offer machines in this range for $5-10/month. Hetzner offers excellent price-to-performance for European and US regions.

Recommended production setup: 2 vCPUs with 4GB RAM and 40GB SSD handles most medium deployments without resource contention. This gives Hoppscotch headroom for background tasks, caching, and concurrent users while leaving capacity for other services on the same host.

Storage planning: The Docker volumes in this docker-compose.yml store all persistent Hoppscotch data. Estimate your storage growth rate early — for data-intensive tools, budget for 3-5x your initial estimate. Hetzner Cloud and Vultr both support online volume resizing without stopping your instance.

Operating system: Any modern 64-bit Linux distribution works. Ubuntu 22.04 LTS and Debian 12 are the most commonly tested configurations. Ensure Docker Engine 24.0+ and Docker Compose v2 are installed — verify with docker --version and docker compose version. Avoid Docker Desktop on production Linux servers; it adds virtualization overhead and behaves differently from Docker Engine in ways that cause subtle networking issues.

Network: Only ports 80 and 443 need to be publicly accessible when running behind a reverse proxy. Internal service ports should be bound to localhost only. A minimal UFW firewall that blocks all inbound traffic except SSH, HTTP, and HTTPS is the single most effective security measure for a self-hosted server.

Backup and Disaster Recovery

Running Hoppscotch without a tested backup strategy is an unacceptable availability risk. Docker volumes are not automatically backed up — if you delete a volume or the host fails, data is gone with no recovery path.

What to back up: The named Docker volumes containing Hoppscotch's data (database files, user uploads, application state), your docker-compose.yml and any customized configuration files, and .env files containing secrets.

Backup approach: For simple setups, stop the container, archive the volume contents, then restart. For production environments where stopping causes disruption, use filesystem snapshots or database dump commands (PostgreSQL pg_dump, SQLite .backup, MySQL mysqldump) that produce consistent backups without downtime.

For a complete automated backup workflow that ships snapshots to S3-compatible object storage, see the Restic + Rclone backup guide. Restic handles deduplication and encryption; Rclone handles multi-destination uploads. The same setup works for any Docker volume.

Backup cadence: Daily backups to remote storage are a reasonable baseline for actively used tools. Use a 30-day retention window minimum — long enough to recover from mistakes discovered weeks later. For critical data, extend to 90 days and use a secondary destination.

Restore testing: A backup that has never been restored is a backup you cannot trust. Once a month, restore your Hoppscotch backup to a separate Docker Compose stack on different ports and verify the data is intact. This catches silent backup failures, script errors, and volume permission issues before they matter in a real recovery.

Security Hardening

Self-hosting means you are responsible for Hoppscotch's security posture. The Docker Compose setup provides a functional base; production deployments need additional hardening.

Always use a reverse proxy: Never expose Hoppscotch's internal port directly to the internet. The docker-compose.yml binds to localhost; Caddy or Nginx provides HTTPS termination. Direct HTTP access transmits credentials in plaintext. A reverse proxy also centralizes TLS management, rate limiting, and access logging.

Strong credentials: Change default passwords immediately after first login. For secrets in docker-compose environment variables, generate random values with openssl rand -base64 32 rather than reusing existing passwords.

Firewall configuration:

ufw default deny incoming
ufw allow 22/tcp
ufw allow 80/tcp
ufw allow 443/tcp
ufw enable

Internal service ports (databases, admin panels, internal APIs) should only be reachable from localhost or the Docker network, never directly from the internet.

Network isolation: Docker Compose named networks keep Hoppscotch's services isolated from other containers on the same host. Database containers should not share networks with containers that don't need direct database access.

VPN access for sensitive services: For internal-only tools, restricting access to a VPN adds a strong second layer. Headscale is an open source Tailscale control server that puts your self-hosted stack behind a WireGuard mesh, eliminating public internet exposure for internal tools.

Update discipline: Subscribe to Hoppscotch's GitHub releases page to receive security advisory notifications. Schedule a monthly maintenance window to pull updated images. Running outdated container images is the most common cause of self-hosted service compromises.

Troubleshooting Common Issues

Container exits immediately or won't start

Check logs first — they almost always explain the failure:

docker compose logs -f hoppscotch

Common causes: a missing required environment variable, a port already in use, or a volume permission error. Port conflicts appear as bind: address already in use. Find the conflicting process with ss -tlpn | grep PORT and either stop it or change Hoppscotch's port mapping in docker-compose.yml.

Cannot reach the web interface

Work through this checklist:

Confirm the container is running: docker compose ps
Test locally on the server: curl -I http://localhost:PORT
If local access works but external doesn't, check your firewall: ufw status
If using a reverse proxy, verify it's running and the config is valid: caddy validate --config /etc/caddy/Caddyfile

Permission errors on volume mounts

Some containers run as a non-root user. If the Docker volume is owned by root, the container process cannot write to it. Find the volume's host path with docker volume inspect VOLUME_NAME, check the tool's documentation for its expected UID, and apply correct ownership:

chown -R 1000:1000 /var/lib/docker/volumes/your_volume/_data

High resource usage over time

Memory or CPU growing continuously usually indicates unconfigured log rotation, an unbound cache, or accumulated data needing pruning. Check current usage with docker stats hoppscotch. Add resource limits in docker-compose.yml to prevent one container from starving others. For ongoing visibility into resource trends, deploy Prometheus + Grafana or Netdata.

Data disappears after container restart

Data stored in the container's writable layer — rather than a named volume — is lost when the container is removed or recreated. This happens when the volume mount path in docker-compose.yml doesn't match where the application writes data. Verify mount paths against the tool's documentation and correct the mapping. Named volumes persist across container removal; only docker compose down -v deletes them.

Keeping Hoppscotch Updated

Hoppscotch follows a regular release cadence. Staying current matters for security patches and compatibility. The update process with Docker Compose is straightforward:

docker compose pull          # Download updated images
docker compose up -d         # Restart with new images
docker image prune -f        # Remove old image layers (optional)

Read the changelog before major version updates. Some releases include database migrations or breaking configuration changes. For major version bumps, test in a staging environment first — run a copy of the service on different ports with the same volume data to validate the migration before touching production.

Version pinning: For stability, pin to a specific image tag in docker-compose.yml instead of latest. Update deliberately after reviewing the changelog. This trades automatic patch delivery for predictable behavior — the right call for business-critical services.

Post-update verification: After updating, confirm Hoppscotch is functioning correctly. Most services expose a /health endpoint that returns HTTP 200 — curl it from the server or monitor it with your uptime tool.

The SaaS-to-Self-Hosted Migration Guide (Free PDF)