22 days ago
Hello Railway Team,
I'm seeking help with a persistent network issue on my deployed WebSocket server.
My Node.js WebSocket server, deployed on Railway, is unable to establish a real-time streaming connection to the Deepgram API (api.deepgram.com) for speech-to-text.
Incoming WebSocket connections from my frontend (on Vercel) are working correctly.
My server correctly receives the init message and the user's audio stream.
However, the outbound connection from my Railway container to Deepgram's WebSocket API fails to establish every single time. The connection attempt fails silently; the Deepgram SDK never emits an 'open', 'error', or 'close' event.
This leads to my application's core STT functionality being completely broken in production, while it works perfectly on my local machine.
There are no explicit error messages thrown by the application. The primary symptom is the silent failure of the Deepgram connection, which I can see in my application logs. My server logs consistently show deepgramReadyState: 'NOT_CONNECTED', and as a result, it endlessly buffers incoming user audio without ever processing it.
The build and deployment process completes successfully. The issue occurs at runtime.
Here are the key logs from a fresh deployment, showing the entire lifecycle from startup to the point of failure:
Generated log
// Step 1: Server starts and correctly loads the API keys from Railway's environment variables.
🔬 [DIAGNOSTIC TEST] Checking environment variables...
- Is DEEPGRAM_API_KEY present? : true
- Is ELEVENLABS_API_KEY present? : true
🔬 [DIAGNOSTIC TEST] End of check.
🚀 WebSocket server running on port 8080
// Step 2: A user connects successfully from the frontend.
👋 [CONNECTION] New client connected: dafca3be-3f5c-48ad-a77a-8679b878db09
📥 [MESSAGE] dafca3be-3f5c-48ad-a77a-8679b878db09: init
🚀 [INIT] Initializing client dafca3be-3f5c-48ad-a77a-8679b878db09
// Step 3: The server attempts to initialize the Deepgram connection for this new client.
🎯 [INIT] Initializing Deepgram for client dafca3be-3f5c-48ad-a77a-8679b878db09
🎯 [DEEPGRAM] Starting Deepgram initialization for client dafca3be-3f5c-48ad-a77a-8679b878db09
🎯 [DEEPGRAM] Client found, creating Deepgram connection...
🎯 [DEEPGRAM] Deepgram API key available: true
🎯 [DEEPGRAM] Deepgram client initialized: false
🎯 [DEEPGRAM] Connection config: { model: 'nova-3', ... }
// --- THE CRITICAL POINT OF FAILURE ---
// After the "Connection config" log, there are no further logs indicating success (like 'open' event) or failure ('error' event).
// Step 4: The server now receives audio from the user, but because the Deepgram connection never opened, it buffers the audio endlessly.
🎵 [AUDIO_DATA_DEBUG] Processing audio for dafca3be-3f5c-48ad-a77a-8679b878db09: {
audioDataLength: 1366,
hasDeepgramLive: false,
deepgramReadyState: 'NOT_CONNECTED',
isReconnecting: false,
timestamp: '2025-07-11T19:41:13.992Z'
}
⚠️ [AUDIO_DATA_DEBUG] Buffering audio - Deepgram not ready for dafca3be-3f5c-48ad-a77a-8679b878db094 Replies
22 days ago
Hey there! We've found the following might help you get unblocked faster:
If you find the answer from one of these, please let us know by solving the thread!
22 days ago
I think the problem is that Railway’s free plan might limit or block outgoing WebSocket connections to external services like Deepgram, or it might close long WebSocket connections too soon.
uhmmm you could try upgrading your Railway plan first and see if the connection works better.
idiegea21
I think the problem is that Railway’s free plan might limit or block outgoing WebSocket connections to external services like Deepgram, or it might close long WebSocket connections too soon. uhmmm you could try upgrading your Railway plan first and see if the connection works better.
22 days ago
The issue here is not a timeout. There is no long websocket being used.
No plan limits websockets or specific endpoints either.
16 days ago
Hi Railway Support Team,
I’m currently using Railway on the trial plan and running into a critical issue with our production environment.
We're integrating Deepgram’s WebSocket API for real-time speech-to-text streaming, but we’re facing persistent connectivity problems — either the WebSocket fails to connect or drops unexpectedly during active sessions. This is only happening on Railway; the same setup works fine in our local.
Could this be related to any limitations, proxy handling, or outbound WebSocket restrictions on the trial plan?
We’d appreciate any guidance or clarification you can provide so we can resolve this as soon as possible, as it’s impacting our production use case.