Deployment

Environment Variables

Auth.js libraries require you to set an AUTH_SECRET environment variable. This is used to encrypt cookies and tokens. It should be a random string of at least 32 characters. On Unix based systems you can use this command:

npm exec auth secret

Alternatively, you can use the following openssl command, which should be available on all Linux / Mac OS X systems.

openssl rand -base64 33

If you are using an OAuth Provider, your provider will provide you with a Client ID and Client Secret that you will need to set as environment variables as well (in the case of an OIDC provider, like Auth0, a third issuer value might be also required, refer to the provider’s specific documentation).

AUTH_OKTA_ID=abc
AUTH_OKTA_SECRET=abc
AUTH_OKTA_ISSUER=abc

AUTH_SECRET

This is the only strictly required environment variable. It is the secret used to encode the JWT and encrypt things in transit. As mentioned above, we recommend at least a 32 character random string. This can be generated via the CLI with npm exec auth secret or via openssl with openssl rand -base64 33.

AUTH_TRUST_HOST

When deploying your application behind a reverse proxy, you’ll need to set AUTH_TRUST_HOST equal to true. This tells Auth.js to trust the X-Forwarded-Host header from the reverse proxy. Auth.js will automatically infer this to be true if we detect the environment variable indicating that your application is running on one of the supported hosting providers. Currently VERCEL and CF_PAGES (Cloudflare Pages) are supported.

AUTH_URL

This environment variable is mostly unnecessary with v5 as the host is inferred from the request headers. However, if you are using a different base path, you can set this environment variable as well. For example, AUTH_URL=http://localhost:3000/web/auth or AUTH_URL=https://company.com/app1/auth

AUTH_REDIRECT_PROXY_URL

This environment variable is designed for advanced use-cases only, when using Auth.js as a proxy for preview deploys, for example. For more details, see the securing preview deploys section below.

Serverless

1. Create the required environment variables for your desired environments. Don’t forget to also add the required environment variables for your provider(s) of choice (i.e. OAuth clientId / clientSecret, etc.).
2. When using an OAuth provider, make sure the callback URL for your production URL is setup correctly. Many OAuth providers will only allow you to set 1 callbackUrl per OAuth application. In which case, you’ll need to create separate applications for each environment (development, production, etc.). Other providers, like Google, allow you to add many callbackUrls to one application.
   • By default, the callbackUrl for next-auth (Next.js) applications should look something like this: https://company.com/api/auth/callback/[provider] (replace company.com with your domain and provider with the provider name, i.e. github).
   • All other frameworks (@auth/sveltekit, @auth/express, etc.), by default, will use the path /auth/callback/[provider].
3. Deploy! After having setup those two prerequisites, you should be able to deploy and run your Auth.js application on Netlify, Vercel, etc.

Self-hosted

Auth.js can also be deployed anywhere you can deploy your framework of choice. Check out the framework’s documentation on self-hosting.

Docker

In a Docker environment, make sure to set either trustHost: true in your Auth.js configuration or the AUTH_TRUST_HOST environment variable to true.

Our example application is also hosted via Docker here (see the source code). Below is an example Dockerfile for a Next.js application using Auth.js.

FROM node:20-alpine AS base
 
# Install dependencies only when needed
FROM base AS deps
# Check https://github.com/nodejs/docker-node/tree/b4117f9333da4138b03a546ec926ef50a31506c3#nodealpine to understand why libc6-compat might be needed.
RUN apk add --no-cache libc6-compat
WORKDIR /app
 
# Install dependencies
COPY package.json ./
RUN npm i
 
 
# Rebuild the source code only when needed
FROM base AS builder
WORKDIR /app
COPY --from=deps /app/node_modules ./node_modules
COPY . .
 
# Next.js collects completely anonymous telemetry data about general usage.
# Learn more here: https://nextjs.org/telemetry
# Uncomment the following line in case you want to disable telemetry during the build.
# ENV NEXT_TELEMETRY_DISABLED 1
 
# This should be replaced with an actual secret in production.
# REVIEW: Can we make this not required during build?
RUN AUTH_SECRET=dummy npm run build
 
# Production image, copy all the files and run next
FROM base AS runner
WORKDIR /app
 
ENV NODE_ENV production
# Uncomment the following line in case you want to disable telemetry during runtime.
# ENV NEXT_TELEMETRY_DISABLED 1
 
RUN addgroup --system --gid 1001 nodejs
RUN adduser --system --uid 1001 nextjs
 
COPY --from=builder /app/public ./public
 
# Set the correct permission for prerender cache
RUN mkdir .next
RUN chown nextjs:nodejs .next
 
# Automatically leverage output traces to reduce image size
# https://nextjs.org/docs/advanced-features/output-file-tracing
COPY --from=builder --chown=nextjs:nodejs /app/.next/standalone ./
COPY --from=builder --chown=nextjs:nodejs /app/.next/static ./.next/static
 
USER nextjs
 
EXPOSE 3000
 
ENV PORT 3000
 
# server.js is created by next build from the standalone output
# https://nextjs.org/docs/pages/api-reference/next-config-js/output
CMD HOSTNAME="0.0.0.0" node server.js

Securing a preview deployment

Most OAuth providers cannot be configured with multiple callback URLs or using a wildcard.

However, Auth.js supports Preview deployments, even with OAuth providers. The idea is to have one deployment which proxies authentication requests to the dynamic URLs of your main application. So you could have 1 stable deployment, like at auth.company.com where you would point all your OAuth provider’s callbackUrls, and this application would then, upon successful authentication, redirect the user back to the preview deploy URL, like https://git-abc123-myapp.vercel.app. Follow these steps to get started with securing preview deploys with Auth.js.

1. Determine a stable deployment URL. For example, a deployment whose URL does not change between builds, for example. auth.yourdomain.com (using a subdomain is not a requirement, this can be the main site’s URL too, for example.)
2. In your preview deploy application, set AUTH_REDIRECT_PROXY_URL to that stable deployment URL, including the path from where Auth.js handles the routes. Eg.: (https://auth.yourdomain.com/api/auth)
3. Update the callbackUrl in your OAuth provider’s configuration to use the stable deployment URL. For example, for GitHub it would be https://auth.yourdomain.com/api/auth/callback/github.

Fun fact: all of our example apps are using the proxy functionality!