Deploy Moltis on a VPS

Run your own AI agent on a $5/month VPS. This guide covers provisioning, installation, and connecting channels (Telegram, Discord, etc.) so you can talk to your agent from anywhere.

Prerequisites

• A VPS with at least 1 GB RAM and 10 GB disk (any provider: Hetzner, DigitalOcean, Linode, Vultr, etc.)
• SSH access to the server
• An API key from at least one LLM provider (Anthropic, OpenAI, etc.)

Option A: Docker (recommended)

Docker is the fastest path. It handles TLS certificates, sandbox isolation, and upgrades via image pulls.

1. Install Docker

curl -fsSL https://get.docker.com | sh
sudo usermod -aG docker $USER
# Log out and back in for group membership to take effect

2. Deploy Moltis

mkdir -p ~/moltis && cd ~/moltis
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/moltis-org/moltis/main/deploy/docker-compose.yml -o docker-compose.yml

# Set your password
export MOLTIS_PASSWORD="your-secure-password"

# Start
docker compose up -d

3. Access the web UI

Open https://<your-server-ip>:13131 in your browser. You’ll see a TLS warning because Moltis generates a self-signed certificate. Accept it or download the CA from http://<your-server-ip>:13132.

Log in with the password you set, then configure your LLM provider in Settings.

Option B: Binary + systemd

For servers without Docker, install the binary directly.

1. Download the binary

# Replace VERSION with the latest release (e.g. 20260420.01)
VERSION=$(curl -s https://api.github.com/repos/moltis-org/moltis/releases/latest | grep tag_name | cut -d '"' -f 4)
ARCH=$(uname -m | sed 's/x86_64/x86_64/;s/aarch64/aarch64/')

curl -fsSL "https://github.com/moltis-org/moltis/releases/download/${VERSION}/moltis-${VERSION}-linux-${ARCH}.tar.gz" | sudo tar xz -C /usr/local/bin

2. Create user and directories

sudo useradd -r -s /usr/sbin/nologin moltis
sudo mkdir -p /var/lib/moltis /etc/moltis
sudo chown moltis:moltis /var/lib/moltis /etc/moltis

3. Install the systemd service

sudo curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/moltis-org/moltis/main/deploy/moltis.service -o /etc/systemd/system/moltis.service
sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl enable --now moltis

4. Set your password

sudo -u moltis MOLTIS_DATA_DIR=/var/lib/moltis MOLTIS_CONFIG_DIR=/etc/moltis moltis auth reset-password

5. Check status

sudo systemctl status moltis
sudo journalctl -u moltis -f

Connecting channels

Once Moltis is running, add messaging channels from Settings > Channels in the web UI. Each channel has its own setup flow:

See the individual channel docs for detailed setup instructions.

Firewall

Open ports 13131 (HTTPS gateway) and 13132 (HTTP CA download) in your firewall. If you put Moltis behind a reverse proxy (nginx, Caddy), you only need to expose the proxy port and can use --no-tls on Moltis.

# UFW example
sudo ufw allow 13131/tcp
sudo ufw allow 13132/tcp

Upgrades

Docker: docker compose pull && docker compose up -d

Binary: Download the new release binary and restart the service:

sudo systemctl stop moltis
# Download new binary (same curl as step 1)
sudo systemctl start moltis

Resource requirements

LLM inference happens on the provider’s API servers, so even a $5 VPS handles chat workloads with external providers.