Environment Variables

The default configuration in GrowthBook is optimized for trying things out quickly on a local dev machine. Beyond that, you can customize behavior with Environment Variables.

Domains and Ports

This is used to generate links to GrowthBook and enable CORS access to the API.

APP_ORIGIN - default http://localhost:3000
API_HOST - default http://localhost:3100

If you want to run GrowthBook on a different host than localhost, you need to add the above environment variables to your docker-compose.yml file.

growthbook:
  ...
  environment:
    - APP_ORIGIN=http://<my ip>:3000
    - API_HOST=http://<my ip>:3100

Important: In order for authentication cookies to work correctly, both the app and api domains must be considered the "same site". They can be on different subdomains or ports, but the root domain must be the same.

Works: gb.example.com and gb-api.example.com
Breaks: gb-example.com and gb-api-example.com

If you need to change the ports on your local dev environment (e.g. if 3000 is already being used), you need to update the above variables AND change the port mapping in docker-compose.yml:

growthbook:
  ports:
    - "4000:3000" # example: use 4000 instead of 3000 for the app
    - "4100:3100" # example: use 4100 instead of 3100 for the api
  ...
  environment:
    - APP_ORIGIN=http://<my ip or url>:4000
    - API_HOST=http://<my ip or url>:4100

Production Settings

NODE_ENV - Set to "production" to turn on additional optimizations and API request logging
MONGODB_URI - The MongoDB connection string
JWT_SECRET - Auth signing key (use a long random string)
ENCRYPTION_KEY - Data source credential encryption key (use a long random string)

If you change the ENCRYPTION_KEY, you will need to migrate any existing data sources using the following script:

# If you didn't have an ENCRYPTION_KEY before, leave OLD_KEY blank below
docker-compose run growthbook yarn migrate-encryption-key OLD_KEY

When using GrowthBook in production, it is important to change the NODE_ENV to to "production" and change the JWT_SECRET to a random string. Using the production node environment and the default JWT_SECRET will throw an error.

Email SMTP Settings

This is required in order to send experiment alerts, team member invites, and reset password emails.

EMAIL_ENABLED ("true" or "false")
EMAIL_HOST
EMAIL_PORT
EMAIL_HOST_USER
EMAIL_HOST_PASSWORD
EMAIL_FROM

Google OAuth Settings

Only required if using Google Analytics as a data source

GOOGLE_OAUTH_CLIENT_ID
GOOGLE_OAUTH_CLIENT_SECRET

File Uploads

The UPLOAD_METHOD environment variable controls where to store uploaded files and screenshots. The supported values are local, s3, and google-cloud.

local

This is the default value. Uploads are stored in the GrowthBook docker container at /usr/local/src/app/packages/back-end/uploads. In production, you should mount a volume here to persist uploads across container restarts.

s3

Store uploads in an AWS S3 bucket.

S3_BUCKET
S3_REGION (defaults to us-east-1)
S3_DOMAIN (defaults to https://${S3_BUCKET}.s3.amazonaws.com/)
AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID (not required when deployed to AWS with an instance role)
AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY (not required when deployed to AWS with an instance role)

google-cloud

Store uploads in a Google Cloud Storage bucket.

GCS_BUCKET_NAME
GCS_DOMAIN (defaults to https://storage.googleapis.com/${GCS_BUCKET_NAME}/)
GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS (not required when deployed to GCP with an instance service account)

Enterprise Settings

Some features in self-hosted GrowthBook are only available with an Enterprise license key. Reach out to sales@growthbook.io to learn more.

LICENSE_KEY - Your signed license key provided by the GrowthBook team
SSO_CONFIG - A JSON-encoded string that configures SSO (using OpenID Connect). It should be an object with the following keys:
- clientId (string)
- clientSecret (string)
- emailDomain (string, optional) - Allow auto-joining from a specified email domain
- metadata (object)
  - issuer (string)
  - authorization_endpoint (string)
  - jwks_uri (string)
  - id_token_signing_alg_values_supported (array of strings)
  - token_endpoint (string)
  - code_challenge_methods_supported (array of strings)
  - logout_endpoint (string, optional)
- extraQueryParams (object, optional) - Dictionary of extra query params to be passed along with the /authorize OAuth call
- additionalScope (string, optional) - Additional scopes to include, along with the default value: openid profile email

For SSO, make sure the following callback URL is whitelisted:

{APP_ORIGIN}/oauth/callback

For the best SSO user experience, enable offline access and refresh tokens in your Identity Provder.

Other Settings

EXPERIMENT_REFRESH_FREQUENCY - Default update schedule for experiment results. Update when stale for X hours (default 6).
QUERY_CACHE_TTL_MINS - How long (in minutes) to cache and re-use SQL query results (default 60)
DEFAULT_CONVERSION_WINDOW_HOURS - How many hours after being put into an experiment does a user have to convert. Can be overridden on a per-metric basis. (default 72)
DISABLE_TELEMETRY - We collect anonymous telemetry data to help us improve GrowthBook. Set to "true" to disable.