Step 1 - Install

Estimated time to complete this step: 2 minutes

Install FusionAuth

First, you need to get FusionAuth up and running. The simplest way to run FusionAuth is to install it on your development machine (which is probably the laptop you are reading this doc on). The benefit of running FusionAuth locally is that you don’t need internet access to use FusionAuth and you can also automate unit, integration, and functional tests against it.

Plus, you’ll likely want to run FusionAuth in your staging environment, and probably in your CI/CD pipeline as well. Learning to install FusionAuth now is a great place to start.

Pick your preferred method of installation below. And remember, these are not exhaustive. FusionAuth also provides platform-specific options and services such as DEB and RPM packages. For a list of all our download and installation options, visit https://fusionauth.io/download.


Docker Compose

Use the following Docker Compose commands to get up and running quickly with FusionAuth, PostgreSQL, and Opensearch. You might need to modify it if you are using a different operating system. Feel free to open an issue in GitHub if you find any issues.

Step 1: Download the Docker files

  curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/FusionAuth/fusionauth-containers/main/docker/fusionauth/docker-compose.yml > docker-compose.yml && \
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/FusionAuth/fusionauth-containers/main/docker/fusionauth/.env > .env

Step 2: Download the Kickstart files needed for this project

NOTE: The Docker Compose configuration loads these Kickstart files automatically.

  curl -fsSL https://github.com/FusionAuth/fusionauth-example-kickstart/archive/refs/heads/main.zip > kickstarts.zip && \
unzip kickstarts.zip && \
ln -s fusionauth-example-kickstart-main/get-started kickstart

Step 3: Start the Docker Compose containers

  docker compose up

Then open http://localhost:9011 in your browser.

Open the web UI

Open a browser to http://localhost:9011/admin and you’ll be presented with the FusionAuth login page. The installation instructions above used Kickstart, which created an admin user:

Go ahead and log into the FusionAuth admin UI now by clicking the lock icon in the top right corner.

NOTE: You should log out of the FusionAuth Admin UI before proceeding to the next step. The next set of steps all work with an admin user, but it’s better to demonstrate login and protected pages using an Ordinary User instead. To logout click the Logout button in the top right corner.

Next steps

Ready for the next step? Step 2 - Login button >