Quickstart for Karakeep

Karakeep lets you save links, notes and images from any device, automatically fetching titles, descriptions and previews so you never lose context on what you bookmarked. It uses AI-based automatic tagging and summarization to organize saved items without manual filing, with optional local-model support via Ollama. Search covers the full text of everything you save, including OCR'd text extracted from images and screenshots. The stack bundles a Meilisearch instance for fast full-text search and a headless Chrome container for capturing pages, alongside the main Next.js app. It's a self-hosted alternative to commercial read-it-later and bookmarking services, keeping saved content on your own infrastructure.

Deploy Karakeep on Elestio

1. Open the Karakeep deployment page and sign in, or create an account.
2. Choose a cloud provider, a region and a data center. Pick the region closest to your users for the lowest latency.
3. Choose an instance size. Elestio only lists the sizes that can run Karakeep properly (at least 2 vCPU and 4 GB of RAM).
4. Choose your support plan and the maintenance window for system and software updates (times are in UTC).
5. Click Create Service. Karakeep is deployed and ready in a few minutes, and you receive an email with the access details.

The full walkthrough with screenshots is in the installation guide.

Access Karakeep

Open your service in the Elestio dashboard and go to the Overview tab. Click Display Admin UI to reveal the URL, username and password of your Karakeep instance.

If the password field is blank, Karakeep does not ship with a pre-created admin user: open the admin URL to start its setup. Software without a web interface, such as databases, is reached with the credentials and port listed in the same tab. See Admin UI and credentials.

Next steps

• Custom domain and SSL: point your own domain to Karakeep (guide).
• Backups: new services follow a 3-2-1 backup strategy by default (backups).
• Updates: manage the Karakeep version and update policy (software versions and updates).
• Learn Karakeep: read the official Karakeep documentation.