How to set up continuous deployment in Replit

Open the Tools dock on the left sidebar and click Git. If your Repl does not have a Git repository initialized, Replit will prompt you to create one. Click the Connect to GitHub button and authorize Replit to access your GitHub account if you have not done so before. Select Create a new repository or choose an existing empty repository. Replit will push your current code to the main branch. Once connected, changes sync bidirectionally — edits in Replit push to GitHub, and pushes to GitHub pull into Replit.

Open the .replit file (enable Show hidden files in the file tree menu) and configure the deployment section. The build command runs once during deployment setup — use it for dependency installation and compilation. The run command starts your production server. Set deploymentTarget to cloudrun for Autoscale deployments. Make sure your server binds to 0.0.0.0 (not localhost) and that you configure the ports section with externalPort 80, which is required for the health check to pass.

1# .replit
2entrypoint = "index.js"
3
4run = "npm run dev"
5
6[deployment]
7build = ["sh", "-c", "npm install && npm run build"]
8run = ["sh", "-c", "npm start"]
9deploymentTarget = "cloudrun"
10
11[[ports]]
12localPort = 3000
13externalPort = 80

Replit's deployment health check requires your server to listen on 0.0.0.0 with the external port mapped to 80. This is the single most common deployment failure. Open your server file and verify the host binding. Express apps must pass '0.0.0.0' as the hostname. Flask apps need host='0.0.0.0'. Frameworks like Next.js handle this automatically, but custom servers often default to localhost which is invisible to the health checker.

1// Express.js — correct binding:
2const PORT = process.env.PORT || 3000;
3app.listen(PORT, '0.0.0.0', () => {
4  console.log(`Server running on port ${PORT}`);
5});
6
7# Flask — correct binding:
8if __name__ == '__main__':
9    app.run(host='0.0.0.0', port=3000)
10
11# FastAPI with uvicorn:
12import uvicorn
13if __name__ == '__main__':
14    uvicorn.run('main:app', host='0.0.0.0', port=3000)

Workspace Secrets do not automatically transfer to deployments. Click the Deployments tab, then go to the deployment settings. Find the Secrets or environment variables section and add every key your production app requires: database URLs, API keys, authentication secrets, and any third-party service credentials. This is the number one cause of 'works in development, fails in production' issues on Replit. If you miss a Secret, your app will crash with undefined environment variable errors.

Click the Deployments tab and select your deployment type. Choose Autoscale for web apps with variable traffic (scales to zero when idle, $1/month base), or Reserved VM for apps that need to run continuously ($10-20+/month). Review the build and run commands, verify Secrets are configured, and click Deploy. The build phase installs dependencies and compiles your app. The run phase starts your server. Monitor the Logs tab for errors during both phases. The deployment typically takes 30-60 seconds.

With GitHub connected, your continuous deployment workflow is: make changes locally or in another editor, push to the main branch on GitHub, then open the Replit Deployments tab and click Redeploy to publish the changes. Replit automatically pulls the latest code from GitHub when you open the workspace. For fully automated redeployment, you can create a GitHub Action that calls the Replit deployment API or use a webhook to trigger redeployment on push. The manual redeploy button is the most reliable method as of March 2026.

When a deployment fails or introduces a bug, you need to revert quickly. Replit provides version history that lets you restore your workspace to a previous state. Additionally, if you are using Agent, checkpoints are created at each step and can be rolled back to. For Git-based rollback, revert the problematic commit on GitHub, pull the revert into Replit, and redeploy. Always keep your last known-good deployment as a reference point by tagging releases in Git.

1# In Replit Shell — revert the last commit:
2git revert HEAD --no-edit
3git push origin main
4
5# Then redeploy from the Deployments tab