Hello Railway team, I’m trying to deploy a modern React frontend using Vite 7.x on Railway, but the build fails due to Node.js version incompatibility: error vite@7.1.0: The engine "node" is incompatible with this module. Expected version "^20.19.0 || >=22.12.0". Got "20.18.1" **Details:** * My repo contains a **.nvmrc** file set to 20.19.0 and "engines": { "node": ">=20.18.0 <21.0.0" } in **package.json**. * Railway only provides Node 20.18.1 (too old for Vite 7.x) or Node 22.11.0 (too early, not supported by Vite 7.x). * Vite 7.x (and other modern tools like Next.js, Astro, etc.) require at least Node 20.19.0 or Node 22.12.0 due to upstream ESM loader changes. **Could you please:** * Add Node 20.19.0 (or newer) and/or Node 22.12.0+ to the available Node versions on Railway? * Or, let me know if there is a way to force Railway to use a custom Node version for my service? Thank you for your help! Ben

Node.js version too old for Vite 7.x – Need Node 20.19.0+ or 22.12.0+

ben123434567876543

FREEOP

9 months ago

Hello Railway team,

I’m trying to deploy a modern React frontend using Vite 7.x on Railway, but the build fails due to Node.js version incompatibility: error vite@7.1.0: The engine "node" is incompatible with this module. Expected version "^20.19.0 || >=22.12.0". Got "20.18.1"

Details:

My repo contains a .nvmrc file set to 20.19.0 and "engines": { "node": ">=20.18.0 <21.0.0" } in package.json.
Railway only provides Node 20.18.1 (too old for Vite 7.x) or Node 22.11.0 (too early, not supported by Vite 7.x).
Vite 7.x (and other modern tools like Next.js, Astro, etc.) require at least Node 20.19.0 or Node 22.12.0 due to upstream ESM loader changes.

Could you please:

Add Node 20.19.0 (or newer) and/or Node 22.12.0+ to the available Node versions on Railway?
Or, let me know if there is a way to force Railway to use a custom Node version for my service?

Thank you for your help!

Ben

$10 Bounty

5 Replies

Railway

BOT

9 months ago

Hey there! We've found the following might help you get unblocked faster:

🧵 Persistent SSL Error on Production Environment

If you find the answer from one of these, please let us know by solving the thread!

Railway

Hey there! We've found the following might help you get unblocked faster: - [🧵 Persistent SSL Error on Production Environment](https://station.railway.com/questions/persistent-ssl-error-on-production-envir-dd91e8b1) If you find the answer from one of these, please let us know by solving the thread!

ben123434567876543

FREEOP

9 months ago

nope

mateodemuynck

PRO

9 months ago

Hey,

You can add the NIXPACKS_NODE_VERSION environment variable to your project and set it to 21 it should work (https://nixpacks.com/docs/providers/node)

mateodemuynck

Hey, You can add the **NIXPACKS\_NODE\_VERSION** environment variable to your project and set it to 21 it should work (<https://nixpacks.com/docs/providers/node>)

ben123434567876543

FREEOP

9 months ago

didn't work but thanks, trying with a Dockerfile now, don't know if it's going to work

markothedev

HOBBY

9 months ago

1. Railway supports Docker deployments so use dockerfile for just deployment 
create a dockerfile and add this..then deploy to railway
    FROM node:20.19.0-alpine
    WORKDIR /app
    COPY package*.json ./
    RUN npm install
    COPY . .
    RUN npm run build
    EXPOSE 3000
    CMD ["npm", "start"]

2. Use Railway's Nixpacks with custom Node version: You can try adding a nixpacks.toml file to specify the Node version:
    create a toml file and add this
    [phases.setup]
    nixPkgs = ["nodejs-20_x"]

Welcome!