How to Deploy Flowise

Flowise was an open-source platform for building AI agents visually. This archived guide documents how existing users can run the final release locally with Docker Compose.

For a maintained platform, start with our Flowise alternatives comparison.

Deploy locally

In this section, we’ll deploy Flowise locally with Docker Compose. We’ll provide a minimal, working compose file and walk through a few common Docker Compose commands. By the end, you’ll have a running local setup.

Prerequisites

Before we get started, make sure you have Docker Desktop installed and running.

Step 1: Create the Docker Compose file

Create a file named compose.yml, then copy the following code into your file:

services:
    flowise:
        image: flowiseai/flowise:3.0.12
        ports:
            - 3000:3000

This is the minimum setup needed to get Flowise running.

Step 2: Start the service

Run the following command in the same directory as your compose.yml:

docker compose up -d

The -d indicates that the service is running in the background, so if you want to check if it's running:

docker compose ps

You should see the flowise service marked as Up, then you can open your browser and go to http://localhost:3000.

Logs can be checked with:

docker compose logs -f

The -f flag streams the logs in real time, just like tail -f, so you can watch new log output as it happens.

To stop and remove the service:

docker compose down

Further steps (recommended)

By default, Flowise stores data inside the container. This means all data will be lost if the container is removed. To persist data across deploys and restarts, mount a volume and set the required environment variables:

services:
    flowise:
        image: flowiseai/flowise:3.0.12
        ports:
            - 3000:3000
        volumes:
            - ~/.flowise:/root/.flowise
        environment:
            - DATABASE_PATH=/root/.flowise
            - SECRETKEY_PATH=/root/.flowise
            - LOG_PATH=/root/.flowise/logs
            - BLOB_STORAGE_PATH=/root/.flowise/storage

This setup ensures:

• Your database persists
• Secrets don’t reset
• Logs and file uploads are kept between restarts

Sliplane preset availability

Sliplane retired the Flowise one-click preset for new deployments after the upstream project reached end of life. Existing Flowise services are not removed by this change, but they no longer receive upstream releases or official support.

For new workloads, compare n8n, Langflow, Dify, Activepieces, and Haystack. Sliplane continues to provide one-click presets for options including n8n and Langflow.

FAQ

Q: Can I still self-host Flowise? A: The Apache 2.0 source remains available in the archived repository, so existing users can keep or fork it. The official npm packages and Docker images are deprecated, and the core team no longer maintains or supports the project.

Q: Can I deploy a new Flowise service with the Sliplane preset? A: No. Sliplane removed the Flowise preset for new deployments after the project reached end of life. Existing services continue to appear in their projects.

Q: What is the difference between Flowise and n8n? A: Flowise focused on visually building LLM apps, while n8n is a maintained general-purpose automation platform with AI nodes. See the full Flowise alternatives comparison or deploy n8n with Sliplane.