Self-Hosted Setup

Stand up the Mem0 REST server and dashboard in a few minutes, with an admin account, API keys, and a live audit log included.

The self-hosted bundle ships the REST API and a web dashboard together. Configure your LLM provider and secrets in a .env file, start the containers, then choose how to create your admin account: through the browser-based setup wizard, or from the command line.

Use this page when…

• You want a self-hosted Mem0 with a dashboard, not just the Python or Node library.
• You need per-user API keys and a request audit log for your team.
• You’re upgrading from a pre-1.x server that relied on ADMIN_API_KEY or open endpoints.

Upgrading from 1.x? Auth is now on by default. Deployments that ran with an empty ADMIN_API_KEY will return 401 on every protected endpoint until you either set ADMIN_API_KEY, register an admin through the wizard, or set AUTH_DISABLED=true for local development. See Upgrade notes below.

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Prerequisites

• Docker and Docker Compose (the reference path).
• An OPENAI_API_KEY or another provider key; the server reads the same component config as the library.
• A free port 8888 for the API and 3000 for the dashboard.

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Configure the environment

Copy server/.env.example to server/.env and fill in the required values. The server refuses to start if JWT_SECRET is unset once auth is enabled.

Variable	Required	Purpose
OPENAI_API_KEY	Yes	Default LLM and embedder provider.
JWT_SECRET	Yes	Signs access and refresh tokens. Use a long random value. A missing secret causes auth endpoints to return 500.
ADMIN_API_KEY	Optional	Legacy shared admin key. Kept for back-compat; prefer per-user keys for new setups.
AUTH_DISABLED	Optional	true turns off auth for local development only. Never enable in production.
DASHBOARD_URL	Optional	Origin the API accepts for CORS. Defaults to http://localhost:3000. Set this when you front the dashboard on a custom domain.
POSTGRES_*	Optional	Override the bundled Postgres / pgvector connection.

Generate a JWT_SECRET with openssl rand -base64 48 or python -c "import secrets; print(secrets.token_urlsafe(48))".

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Start the stack

Pick the path that fits your workflow.

Browser-first (setup wizard)

cd server
make up

This starts the containers and runs database migrations. The REST API listens on http://localhost:8888 and the dashboard on http://localhost:3000.

Open http://localhost:3000. Since no admin account exists yet, the dashboard redirects to the one-time setup wizard at /setup. See Run the setup wizard below.

Agent-first (command line)

First, set OPENAI_API_KEY (or ANTHROPIC_API_KEY / GOOGLE_API_KEY) in server/.env. make bootstrap does not prompt for it, and the runtime test will fail without a valid provider key.

cd server
make bootstrap

make bootstrap starts the same containers, then automatically creates the admin account and generates the first API key via the CLI. The CLI prints the admin credentials and API key in your terminal. No browser required.

You can override the generated credentials:

make bootstrap EMAIL=[e-mail] PASSWORD='strong-password' NAME='Admin'

Because make bootstrap already creates the admin, the setup wizard is skipped. Opening http://localhost:3000 takes you straight to the login page.

For machine-readable output (useful in CI), run OUTPUT=json make seed after make up.

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Run the setup wizard

This section applies to the browser-first path (make up). If you used make bootstrap, the admin and API key were already created, so skip ahead to What the dashboard gives you.

On a fresh install the dashboard redirects to /setup. Each step submits on Enter.

1. Create the admin account. Name, email, password. This account becomes the first admin. Registration closes after the first admin is created; additional accounts are provisioned by the existing admin.

2. Review the effective config. Read-only display of the LLM and embedder the server is running with, sourced from your environment. If anything is wrong here, stop the stack, fix the .env, and restart. The dashboard intentionally does not let you change provider secrets at runtime.

3. Generate your first API key. The full m0sk_... value is shown once. Copy it immediately. The server stores only the prefix and a bcrypt hash.

4. Tell us your use case. Pick a preset or describe your use case in a few words. Mem0 generates custom instructions that tell the memory system what to prioritize. You can edit the instructions before saving, or skip this step entirely.

5. Test the key. A ready-to-paste curl exercises POST /memories against your new key. Click “Run Test” to fire it from the browser. Success lands you in the dashboard at /dashboard/requests, where you’ll see the test call in the live audit log.

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What the dashboard gives you

Page	What it does
Requests	Default landing page. Live audit log of every API call, with status, latency, and auth mode.
Memories	Browse and search the memories your server has stored.
Entities	Distinct user_id / agent_id / run_id values with memory counts and cascade-delete.
API Keys	Issue per-user keys, label them, and revoke.
Configuration	Runtime override for LLM and embedder. Changes persist to the app database and reapply on restart, layered over the values from your .env.
Settings	Account and session controls.

For the underlying endpoints (including /auth/*, /api-keys, /requests, /entities), see the REST API reference.

Using Mem0? Star us on GitHub to help more developers discover memory for AI apps.

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Supported providers

The shipped container bundles the Python packages for:

• LLMs: openai, anthropic, gemini
• Embedders: openai, gemini

The Configuration page and POST /configure only accept providers from these lists. Anything else returns a 400 up front instead of failing at the first memory write.

To add another provider, for example to run embeddings locally with sentence-transformers:

1. Add the package to server/requirements.txt (e.g. sentence-transformers>=2.0).
2. Extend BUNDLED_LLM_PROVIDERS or BUNDLED_EMBEDDER_PROVIDERS in server/main.py.
3. Rebuild the image (make up or docker compose build).

Heavy providers (sentence-transformers pulls in PyTorch, ~2 GB) are intentionally kept out of the default image.

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Upgrade notes

Upgrading from a pre-auth build

Previous self-hosted builds allowed open access when ADMIN_API_KEY was unset. This build enables auth by default. After pulling the new image, pick one:

1. Fastest, zero client changes: set ADMIN_API_KEY to a long random value (16+ characters). Existing clients that send X-API-Key: <your-key> keep working unchanged.
2. Recommended for teams: visit http://<host>:3000, run the setup wizard, and switch clients to per-user API keys. You get the audit log and revocation for free.
3. Local development only: set AUTH_DISABLED=true. The server logs a warning on every boot. Never use this in production.

The server prints an unmissable startup banner when it detects the “upgraded but not configured” state so you know exactly which option to pick.

Other changes in this release

• Dashboard ships as a second container in the reference Compose stack, wired to the API over the internal Docker network.
• New tables: users, api_keys, request_logs. Alembic handles the migration automatically on first boot.

If alembic upgrade head fails on first boot, see the Troubleshooting section below.

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Troubleshooting

Port 3000 or 8888 is already in use

Find the owning process on either port:

lsof -iTCP:3000 -sTCP:LISTEN
lsof -iTCP:8888 -sTCP:LISTEN

Kill it (kill <PID>) or change the host port in server/docker-compose.yaml.

JWT_SECRET is required

The server refuses to start without one. Generate a secret and add it to server/.env:

echo "JWT_SECRET=$(openssl rand -base64 48)" >> server/.env

AUTH_DISABLED=true is valid for local dev only, never production.

.env changes aren't applied after editing

docker compose restart does not re-read env_file. To pick up changes:

cd server && docker compose up -d --force-recreate mem0
# or
cd server && make up

Provider returns 401 (bad API key)

Provider credential errors surface as 502 Upstream provider error.. Check docker compose logs mem0 for the full trace, then fix the key on the Configuration page and hit Save.

Alembic migrations fail on startup

Inspect the logs:

docker compose logs mem0 | grep -i alembic

If the database is unrecoverable, reset the volume (this destroys all memories and users):

docker compose down -v

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REST API reference

Endpoint tables, auth modes, and example requests.

Configure components

Swap LLMs, embedders, vector stores, and rerankers.