Run GrowthBook with Docker

The fastest way to run GrowthBook locally is with Docker Compose. The Compose stack below starts GrowthBook and a MongoDB instance together — no manual database wiring required.

🚀 Run GrowthBook with Docker first

Save this as compose.yaml, then start the stack:

# compose.yaml
services:
  mongo:
    image: mongo:latest
    environment:
      - MONGO_INITDB_ROOT_USERNAME=root
      - MONGO_INITDB_ROOT_PASSWORD=password
  growthbook:
    image: growthbook/growthbook:latest
    ports: ["3000:3000", "3100:3100"]
    depends_on: [mongo]
    environment:
      - MONGO_URL=mongodb://root:password@mongo:27017/
    volumes: ["uploads:/usr/local/src/app/packages/back-end/uploads"]
volumes:
  uploads:

Then run docker compose up -d and open http://localhost:3000.

No Docker? Use GrowthBook Cloud (free tier).

Step-by-step walkthrough

1. Save the compose.yaml shown in the box above to your project root. The file defines two services — mongo and growthbook — and one named volume for file uploads.

2. Start GrowthBook in the background by running:

docker compose up -d

The -d flag (detached mode) returns control to your terminal immediately while both containers start in the background.

3. Open your browser at http://localhost:3000 — this is the GrowthBook web UI where you create feature flags, run experiments, and manage your account.

4. Your SDK will talk to http://localhost:3100 — this is the GrowthBook SDK API endpoint. Your application fetches feature flag payloads from this URL, not from port 3000.

5. Stop and inspect the stack when you are done:

# Stop all containers (data is preserved in the uploads volume)
docker compose down

# Tail live logs for the growthbook container only
docker compose logs -f growthbook

Full compose.yaml reference

services:
  mongo:
    image: mongo:latest
    environment:
      - MONGO_INITDB_ROOT_USERNAME=root
      - MONGO_INITDB_ROOT_PASSWORD=password
  growthbook:
    image: growthbook/growthbook:latest
    ports: ["3000:3000", "3100:3100"]
    depends_on: [mongo]
    environment:
      - MONGO_URL=mongodb://root:password@mongo:27017/
    volumes: ["uploads:/usr/local/src/app/packages/back-end/uploads"]
volumes:
  uploads:

Port reference

Port	Service	Purpose
3000	GrowthBook web app	Admin UI — create flags, experiments, metrics
3100	GrowthBook SDK API	Your application fetches feature flags from here
27017	MongoDB (internal)	Not exposed to the host; only used by the GrowthBook container

About MongoDB

GrowthBook stores all of its own configuration in MongoDB — feature flag definitions, experiment configs, metrics, and team settings. MongoDB does not hold your analytics event data or your user data warehouse. Your raw events stay wherever they already live (Snowflake, BigQuery, Redshift, etc.).

# Start GrowthBook and MongoDB in the background
docker compose up -d

# Stop all containers (data is preserved)
docker compose down

# Tail live logs for the growthbook container
docker compose logs -f growthbook

Copy Docker commands ⧉

🧪 Key point

Port 3000 is the GrowthBook app — your admin UI. Port 3100 is the SDK API — the endpoint your applications call to fetch feature flags. Both come from the same Compose stack.

Which port serves the GrowthBook web UI?

3000 3100 8080 27017

Which port do SDKs use to fetch feature flags?

3000 3100 8080 27017

What command starts GrowthBook in the background?

docker run growthbook docker compose up -d docker start mongo npm run dev

What does GrowthBook store in MongoDB?

Your analytics event data Feature config, experiments, metrics Docker images SDK client keys only

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