How to run the Prefect server in Docker

You can use the official Prefect Docker image to run a server in a container. If you’re running a server in a Docker container, you need to:

Port forward the server to your local machine (e.g. -p 4200:4200)
Set the --host flag on the prefect server start command to 0.0.0.0
Set the API server address, PREFECT_API_URL, to use Prefect within a container.

For example:

docker run -p 4200:4200 -d --rm prefecthq/prefect:3-latest -- prefect server start --host 0.0.0.0

The -d flag runs the container in detached mode (i.e. in the background) and the --rm flag removes the container once it is stopped.

After running this command, verify that your local prefect profile is configured to point at your containerized server.

prefect config view --show-secrets

Open the dashboard in your browser:

prefect dashboard open

For more information, see the Docker topic about Networking using the host network.

​Further reading