Anonymous Nostr Relay VPS: Host Your Own Node with No KYC

No-KYC VPS for a Nostr relay. 1 vCPU/1 GB, strfry or nostr-rs-relay in Docker, crypto checkout. Deploy →

نص المقال الطويل بالإنجليزية. الواجهة والكتالوج والدفع مترجمة.

Why self-host a Nostr relay

A public relay is someone else’s policy: they can drop events, rate-limit pubkeys, or shut the websocket. A relay you run on a VPS you pay for is a node you operate — NIP traffic stays on your process, your disk, your allow/deny list. That is the same split as anonymous infrastructure and other Web3 nodes: we sell KVM with root; we do not run Nostr for you.

Self-hosting is for a personal inbox relay, a small community, or a write-only relay for your keys. It is not a guarantee that clients will find you; you still publish the URL. Legal content only. CSAM and attacks are AUP fails.

Requirements: 1 vCPU and 1 GB RAM

A quiet personal or small-community relay fits in 1 vCPU and 1 GB RAM if you keep the event DB bounded (retention/limits in the relay config). NovaVPS has no 1 GB SKU; the catalog floor is Nano — 1 vCPU / 2 GB ECC / 40 GB NVMe / unmetered 1 Gbps / $5.49/mo — which covers the 1 GB need with headroom. Busier public relays want more RAM and NVMe as the database grows; map that to Starter (2 vCPU / 4 GB / $8.50/mo) or Plus (4 vCPU / 8 GB / $13.50/mo). Same list price in all thirteen locations. Nested virt is on if you wrap the daemon in Docker.

strfry | nostr-rs-relay via Docker

Two common daemons: strfry (LMDB, websocket on 7777 by default) and nostr-rs-relay (often 8080). Install Docker from distro packages. Copy the project tree you already have onto the VPS (scp/rsync). Do not paste marketplace or VCS clone URLs into the shell. Terminate TLS on 443 with Caddy or nginx in front of the container.

# strfry — build from the tree you uploaded. No registry or VCS URLs.
# Save as docker-compose.yml next to ./strfry/ and ./strfry.conf
services:
  strfry:
    build:
      context: ./strfry
      dockerfile: Dockerfile
    container_name: strfry
    restart: unless-stopped
    ports:
      - "7777:7777"
    volumes:
      - ./strfry.conf:/etc/strfry.conf:ro
      - strfry-data:/var/lib/strfry
    # 1 vCPU / 1 GB is enough for a personal/small relay if DB retention is set.
    mem_limit: 1g
    cpus: 1.0
    logging:
      driver: json-file
      options:
        max-size: "10m"
        max-file: "3"
volumes:
  strfry-data:

# nostr-rs-relay: same pattern — local build, bind 8080, config + data volumes.
# docker compose up -d

You write strfry.conf (or the nostr-rs-relay config) for NIP support, retention, and pubkey policy. We do not ship a relay image.

Pay crypto, stay anonymous

Checkout is a live-rate crypto invoice: BTC, XMR (Monero), USDT (ERC-20 / TRC-20 / BEP-20 / SPL), ETH, SOL, LTC, TRX — no passport, selfie, or phone. Signup is a 32-character token or email plus a 12-character password. Token-only keeps an inbox off the account. Paying in crypto does not change the AUP or who operates the relay.

Launch Nano if 1 GB RSS is the plan; pay XMR if the hosting bill should not sit on a transparent chain.