Railway Django Starter
railwayapp-templates/django ↗ ·★ 480 ·Python ·MIT
A production-ready Django template with Postgres, Gunicorn and WhiteNoise, pre-wired to deploy on Railway with one click and a managed database.
Overview
Railway Django Starter is a batteries-included template for getting a Django app online without fighting deployment config. It comes pre-wired with Gunicorn as the application server, WhiteNoise for serving static files, and environment-variable based settings — the configuration most Django tutorials make you assemble by hand. Deploying it on Railway also provisions a managed Postgres database and injects the connection string automatically.
The appeal is speed with sane defaults. Instead of starting from django-admin startproject and slowly adding production concerns, you start from a project that already serves static assets correctly, reads its secrets from the environment, and talks to a real Postgres instance. That makes it equally useful as a launch pad for a new app and as a reference for how a tidy Django deployment should be structured.
Although it is built around Railway’s one-click flow, nothing ties it there permanently. Because it is a conventional Gunicorn + WhiteNoise + Postgres setup, the same project runs on Render or any platform that can host a Python web process and hand it a database URL. Before going live, set a strong SECRET_KEY, restrict ALLOWED_HOSTS, and review the settings for your environment.
Highlights
- ✓ Django pre-configured with Gunicorn for serving and WhiteNoise for static files
- ✓ Managed Postgres provisioned automatically on Railway
- ✓ Environment-variable based settings, ready for production
- ✓ One-click template deploy — no Dockerfile wrangling to start
Best for
- →Spinning up a Django API or web app quickly
- →Developers who want a managed Postgres without setup
- →Learning a sensible Django production configuration
Getting started
- 1 Click the Railway template to create the project and its Postgres database
- 2 Railway injects DATABASE_URL and other variables automatically
- 3 Set SECRET_KEY and ALLOWED_HOSTS in the service variables
- 4 Run migrations (railway run python manage.py migrate) and open the generated URL
FAQ
Yes. The Railway template provisions a managed Postgres instance and wires DATABASE_URL into the Django service for you, so there is no separate database setup.
Yes. The app is a standard Django project using Gunicorn and WhiteNoise, so it also runs on Render or any host that can serve a Python web process with a Postgres connection string.
It uses production-shaped defaults — Gunicorn, WhiteNoise, env-based settings — but you should still set a strong SECRET_KEY, lock down ALLOWED_HOSTS and review settings before going live.
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