--- title: "Run Sblurp on Render" description: "Run a Sblurp community server on Render: one Starter web service with a persistent disk, the released image, and optional backups to Cloudflare R2." nav: "Render" doc_version: 1 last_updated: 2026-10-17 --- # Render Render runs the server image for you. There is no operating system to patch. One community costs about $7.25 a month. ## Caveats - **Do not use the Free instance type.** Free services stop after 15 minutes without traffic, and they cannot have a disk. Without a disk, every restart deletes your community. - **One instance only.** A service with a disk cannot scale past one instance. This is correct for SQLite, which allows one writer. - **Short downtime on each deploy.** With a disk, Render stops the old instance before it starts the new one. Expect a few seconds of downtime. Clients reconnect by themselves. - **HTTP/1.1 to the server.** Render's proxy speaks HTTP/2 to clients but HTTP/1.1 to your service. The Sblurp apps use Connect, which streams over HTTP/1.1, so they work. A native gRPC client does not. - **Streams end after 100 minutes.** Render closes any request after 100 minutes. Clients open a new Subscribe stream and resume from where they stopped. ## Steps 1. In the Render dashboard, click **New** and then **Web Service**. Select **Existing image** and enter: ``` ghcr.io/OWNER/sblurp-server:stable ``` The tag picks a [track](/docs/updates): `stable`, `beta`, `nightly` or a pinned version. 2. Select the **Starter** instance type, or a larger one. 3. Add these environment variables. Change the name and the URL: ```sh PORT=8080 SBLURP_NAME=My Community SBLURP_BASE_URL=https://chat.example.com SBLURP_TRUSTED_ISSUERS=https://sblurp.chat ``` 4. Under **Advanced**, add a disk. Set the mount path to `/data` and the size to 1 GB. 5. Set the health check path to `/healthz`. 6. Click **Deploy Web Service**. 7. In **Settings**, add your custom domain, such as `chat.example.com`. Add the `CNAME` record that Render shows. Render gets the certificate. 8. Join your community first. The first person to join becomes the owner. Every setting is listed in [Configuration](/docs/configuration). ## Backups on Render Render takes a daily snapshot of the disk. To also copy the data off Render, add the R2 values as environment variables before the first deploy: ```sh AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID= AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY= R2_ENDPOINT=https://.r2.cloudflarestorage.com R2_BUCKET=sblurp-backups BACKUP_PASSWORD= BACKUP_NAME=my-community ``` See [Backups](/docs/backups) for what gets copied and how to restore. ## Updates Render does not pull a new image by itself. To update, click **Manual Deploy** and then **Deploy latest reference**. You can also call the service's deploy hook URL from a script. ## Cost Checked on 2026-10-17: - Starter instance, 512 MB and 0.5 CPU: $7 a month. - Disk: $0.25 per GB a month, so $0.25 for 1 GB. - The Hobby workspace plan is free. That is about $7.25 a month for one community. Check render.com/pricing for current prices. ## Sitemap - [Sblurp: chat for communities](https://sblurp.chat/index.md): Sblurp is group chat with channels, threads and roles. Each community runs on its own server, and one Sblurp account signs you in to all of them. - [About Sblurp](https://sblurp.chat/about.md): Why Sblurp exists: chat for communities that each run their own server, with no ads, no unasked-for AI and an honest word on encryption. - [Privacy at Sblurp](https://sblurp.chat/privacy.md): What sblurp.chat stores about you, what it never stores, what it shares with communities you join, and how to get a copy or delete it. - [Terms of use](https://sblurp.chat/terms.md): The terms for a sblurp.chat account: who can sign up, what you must not do, and what we do and do not promise. A first draft. - [Create your Sblurp account](https://sblurp.chat/signup.md): Create a Sblurp account: one account for every Sblurp community you join. You need an email, a username, a password and to be 13 or older. - [Sign in to Sblurp](https://sblurp.chat/login.md): Sign in to your Sblurp account with your email or username and password, or with a passkey. One account works in every Sblurp community. - [Reset your password](https://sblurp.chat/forgot.md): Forgot your Sblurp password? Type the email you signed up with and we send a link to choose a new one. The link works once, for one hour. - [Sblurp docs](https://sblurp.chat/docs.md): Sblurp documentation: how accounts and communities work, how to run a community server, how to add bots, and the full API reference. - [Accounts and communities](https://sblurp.chat/docs/accounts.md): How a Sblurp account relates to the communities you join: what sblurp.chat keeps, what each community server sees, and what stays private. - [Join a community](https://sblurp.chat/docs/join.md): Join a Sblurp community: add it by address or invite link, answer its questions, choose what to share, and join. - [Sblurp glossary](https://sblurp.chat/docs/glossary.md): The words the Sblurp docs use, from account and community to issuer, track, bot token and seq, each with a link to the page that explains it. - [Run a Sblurp community](https://sblurp.chat/docs/self-host.md): Run a Sblurp community on your own server: one small program and one data folder. What you need, how to start it, and what it stores. - [Run a server](https://sblurp.chat/docs/create.md): For developers: start your own Sblurp community. Run the open-source server, join it first to become the owner, then set it up and invite people. - [Set up a server with AI](https://sblurp.chat/docs/ai.md): Not a developer? Ask an AI assistant such as Claude to set up your Sblurp community server. - [Sblurp server sizes and costs](https://sblurp.chat/docs/hosting.md): Which server size to rent for a Sblurp community and what it costs each month: measured limits per size and prices at Fly.io, DigitalOcean, Hetzner, OVHcloud and AWS Lightsail. - [Run Sblurp on Render](https://sblurp.chat/docs/render.md): Run a Sblurp community server on Render: one Starter web service with a persistent disk, the released image, and optional backups to Cloudflare R2. - [Run Sblurp on Railway](https://sblurp.chat/docs/railway.md): Run a Sblurp community server on Railway: one service from the released image, a volume for /data, and optional backups to Cloudflare R2. - [Run Sblurp on Fly.io](https://sblurp.chat/docs/fly.md): Run a Sblurp community server on Fly.io: one always-on machine with a volume, h2c streaming, and optional backups to Cloudflare R2. - [Run Sblurp on any VPS](https://sblurp.chat/docs/vps.md): Run a Sblurp community server on a small virtual server from Hetzner, OVHcloud, Akamai Linode, Vultr, DigitalOcean or any other host, with Docker Compose. - [Run Sblurp with Docker and Compose](https://sblurp.chat/docs/docker.md): Run a Sblurp community server with Docker Compose and Caddy: the files, the settings, where the data lives, and how to run it behind your own proxy. - [Run Sblurp with Podman](https://sblurp.chat/docs/podman.md): Run a Sblurp community server with a Podman Quadlet file, with daily automatic updates that roll back when a new image does not start. - [Sblurp server configuration](https://sblurp.chat/docs/configuration.md): Every flag and environment variable of the Sblurp community server, with defaults, plus the backup variables of the container image and the built-in limits. - [TLS and reverse proxies for Sblurp](https://sblurp.chat/docs/proxies.md): Put Caddy, nginx or Cloudflare in front of a Sblurp community server without breaking live streams: h2c, no buffering, no compression. - [Back up a Sblurp server](https://sblurp.chat/docs/backups.md): Back up a Sblurp community server: Litestream copies the database to Cloudflare R2 within 10 seconds, an encrypted backup tool copies the files, or make a plain copy. How to restore. - [Update a Sblurp server](https://sblurp.chat/docs/updates.md): Release tracks for the Sblurp server image, the daily update check, manual and automatic updates, and how to roll back. - [Verify a Sblurp release](https://sblurp.chat/docs/provenance.md): Check that a Sblurp server image was built by the public release workflow, with GitHub attestations or cosign. - [Troubleshooting a Sblurp server](https://sblurp.chat/docs/troubleshooting.md): Fix common problems with a Sblurp community server: sign-in fails, messages arrive late, certificates, file links, and where the logs are. - [Invites in Sblurp](https://sblurp.chat/docs/invites.md): Make a Sblurp community invite only, create invite links with an expiry and a use limit, and revoke them. - [Moderation and roles in Sblurp](https://sblurp.chat/docs/moderation.md): Permissions in a Sblurp community (owner, admin, moderator, member), custom roles that limit channels, channel modes, kicks and bans. - [Safety in Sblurp](https://sblurp.chat/docs/safety.md): Who can read your messages, how to protect your account, what to do about unwanted messages, how to report a message, what moderators can do, age rules, and how to reach sblurp.chat. - [Your data in Sblurp](https://sblurp.chat/docs/data.md): What sblurp.chat stores about your account, what a community server stores, who controls each, how long data is kept, backups, export and deletion. - [Sblurp bots](https://sblurp.chat/docs/bots.md): Two ways to add a bot to a Sblurp community: a JavaScript plugin on the server, or a program anywhere that uses the API with a bot token. - [Sblurp bot tokens](https://sblurp.chat/docs/bot-tokens.md): Make a Sblurp bot with a token, run the example bot, and call the API from any language: subscribe to events and reply to mentions. - [Connect an AI agent to Sblurp](https://sblurp.chat/docs/agents.md): How to connect a self-hosted AI agent, such as OpenClaw, NanoClaw or Hermes Agent, to a Sblurp community with a bot token. No built-in connector exists yet. - [Use Sblurp from Claude Code and other MCP clients](https://sblurp.chat/docs/mcp.md): Add a Sblurp community to Claude Code, Claude Desktop, VS Code or another MCP client by URL, sign in with your sblurp.chat account, and let the agent read and post as you. - [Sblurp plugins](https://sblurp.chat/docs/plugins.md): Write a Sblurp bot as one JavaScript file and install it in the app, with the API or in the plugins folder: hooks for joins, messages, slash commands and timers, replies, limits and the dice example. - [Sblurp API: protocol and transport](https://sblurp.chat/docs/api.md): How clients and bots talk to a Sblurp community server: Connect RPC over HTTP, the proto contract, JSON and binary bodies, auth, streaming and versioning. - [Sblurp API explorer](https://sblurp.chat/docs/api/explorer.md): Browse and try every call of the Sblurp community server API in your browser, from the OpenAPI 3.1 description in openapi.json. - [Sblurp API: sign-in and tokens](https://sblurp.chat/docs/api/auth.md): How sign-in works across Sblurp: OAuth 2.0 with PKCE at sblurp.chat, per-server access tokens, JWT claims, refresh token rotation, JWKS, and bot tokens. - [Sblurp API: events](https://sblurp.chat/docs/api/events.md): The Sblurp live event stream: Subscribe, sequence numbers, replay and resync, heartbeats, every event kind, who receives it, and unread counts. - [Sblurp API: uploads and files](https://sblurp.chat/docs/api/files.md): The plain HTTP endpoints of a Sblurp community server: uploads, signed file URLs, custom emoji, invite links and the health check. - [Sblurp API: errors and rate limits](https://sblurp.chat/docs/api/errors.md): Error codes the Sblurp community server returns, what each one means for a client, and the rate limits for people and bots. - [ServerService API reference](https://sblurp.chat/docs/api/server-service.md): Every ServerService call of the Sblurp community server: what it does, who may call it, and its request and response fields. - [ChatService API reference](https://sblurp.chat/docs/api/chat-service.md): Every ChatService call of the Sblurp community server: what it does, who may call it, and its request and response fields. - [BotService API reference](https://sblurp.chat/docs/api/bot-service.md): Every BotService call of the Sblurp community server: what it does, who may call it, and its request and response fields. - [API types](https://sblurp.chat/docs/api/types.md): The messages and enums the Sblurp community server API shares between calls, with every field.