Integrate Replit with Strapi

These integration guides are not official documentation and the Strapi Support Team will not provide assistance with them.

What Is Replit?

Replit is a browser-based IDE that eliminates the usual development setup headaches. You open a tab, start coding immediately, and deploy with a single click—no local environment configuration or server provisioning required.

The platform combines a cloud development environment with an AI assistant called Replit Agent that can scaffold entire projects from plain-English prompts. When you tell it to "build a React app that consumes a Strapi API," the Agent uses templates from the React web-app builder to generate routes, components, and API integration code.

The real advantage shows up in team workflows. Multiple developers can work in the same codebase simultaneously with live cursors and chat, similar to Google Docs collaboration.

Deployments push your code to HTTPS endpoints with CDN backing, while secrets management keeps API keys encrypted and separate from your repository. With built-in support for Node.js, Python, Rust, and other runtimes, you can move from concept to hosted application without the typical DevOps detours that derail early-stage projects.

Why Integrate Replit with Strapi

Pairing Replit's AI-driven workspace with Strapi's API-first CMS creates a full-stack pipeline without the usual setup friction. You get everything in one browser tab—code editor, terminal, database connectors, and live preview—all talking to Strapi's REST or GraphQL endpoints. Less context switching, faster deploy cycles.

When you wire Strapi into Replit, infrastructure headaches disappear. Replit handles HTTPS, CDN caching, and server resources; Strapi manages structured content, roles, and media. You focus on features, not YAML files or port forwarding. The integration works particularly well for several key scenarios:

• Rapid scaffolding streamlines the development process significantly. A single prompt like "build a React frontend that fetches blog posts from Strapi via GraphQL" lets the Agent generate routes, queries, and UI components instantly.
• Unified workspace benefits become apparent when frontend code, API calls, and deployment all live in the same browser IDE, eliminating the need to constantly switch between different tools and contexts.
• Built-in security features protect your sensitive information. Replit's Secrets manager keeps your API tokens encrypted and out of Git history, ensuring database URLs and JWT secrets remain secure.
• Instant deployment capabilities let you publish your app behind automatic HTTPS with global CDN edges in just one click, making Strapi-served content fast everywhere.
• Real-time collaboration enables teammates to see your cursor, share terminals, and debug Strapi integrations together without screen-share lag.

For full-stack developers trying to ship faster, this combination cuts ramp-up time to minutes instead of days. You keep the flexibility of self-hosted Strapi while leveraging Replit's managed infrastructure, AI assistance, and multiplayer editing to push features live with minimal ceremony.

How to Integrate Replit with Strapi

You have two clear paths: run Strapi inside a Replit workspace for an all-in-one sandbox, or keep Strapi on dedicated hosting and let a Replit-based frontend consume its APIs. Either approach follows the same core steps—wire up environment variables, secure your secrets, test the HTTP connection. The following sections walk through prerequisites, environment setup, and both configuration methods in detail.

Prerequisites

Before connecting Replit and Strapi, you need a few things in place:

• Node.js 18+ with npm or yarn serves as your foundation—Strapi 4+ requires this baseline. Install an LTS version on whatever machine builds or hosts your Strapi instance.
• You'll also need a working Strapi project, either by spinning up a new one with the Quick Start CLI or using Strapi Cloud. You need an admin panel you can access and at least one content type to query.
• Your Replit account with permissions allows you to create new Repls and manage secrets through Replit's environment variable interface for API keys and tokens.
• For production deployments, plan for an external database—PostgreSQL or MySQL work best. Strapi's deployment documentation warns against SQLite on ephemeral file systems like Replit's.

Finally, complete your security setup by generating your Strapi API tokens and planning your CORS policy. The integration best practices guide covers both steps in detail.

Setting Up Your Environment

Create a new Repl using the Node.js template for API development or grab the React/Next.js starter from the React web app builder catalog. Your workspace comes ready with Node, live preview, and a terminal for package management.

Install your preferred HTTP client—npm i axios works well, though the built-in fetch handles most cases. Python developers can pip install requests, following the approach outlined in Strapi's Python integration guide.

Head to the Secrets panel and add STRAPI_BASE_URL (like https://my-strapi-app.com) and STRAPI_API_TOKEN. If you're hosting Strapi on Replit, use the platform's connector integrations to set up persistent PostgreSQL or MySQL.

Before testing connectivity, configure Strapi's CORS middleware to accept requests from your Repl domain—this prevents the frustrating CORS errors that pop up later. Check the integration best practices for specific middleware configurations.

Test your setup with this quick verification:

import fetch from 'node-fetch';

const res = await fetch(`${process.env.STRAPI_BASE_URL}/api/posts`);
console.log(await res.json());

If data comes back, you're ready to build. If not, double-check your CORS settings and API token permissions.

Configuring Replit for Strapi Development

Replit's AI Agent handles most of the heavy lifting here. A prompt like "Set up Strapi with Supabase database" in the CMS website builder spins up a working project, installs dependencies, and scaffolds the basic configuration in seconds—the kind of boilerplate setup that usually eats into actual development time.

For workspace organization, you'll find a monorepo structure works well: /backend for Strapi and /frontend for your React or Next.js app. This keeps related code together while preventing the dependency conflicts that inevitably surface when everything lives in the same directory.

A simple script in your root package.json lets you run both sides simultaneously:

{
  "scripts": {
    "dev": "concurrently \"cd backend && npm run develop\" \"cd frontend && npm start\""
  }
}

During development, adding "proxy": "http://localhost:1337" to frontend/package.json simplifies API calls. For public access, you need HOST=0.0.0.0 and PORT=10000 in Replit Secrets so Strapi binds to an external interface that Replit's proxy can expose—this is where local development setups often break when moving to cloud environments.

Wire the project to GitHub early and ignore .env files. Secrets belong in Replit's encrypted store, not your repository. The integration guidelines in the Replit docs cover additional connector management and OAuth flows if you're pulling in external services.

Configuration Method 1: Deploying Strapi on Replit

Running Strapi directly in a Repl works well for experiments and quick prototypes—everything lives in one browser tab. Start with a fresh Node.js Repl and install Strapi:

npx create-strapi-app@latest my-project --quickstart

Here's where things get interesting: the CLI defaults to SQLite, but Replit's filesystem now features persistence across rebuilds and restarts for hosted apps. For critical or production-grade data, however, it's still recommended to use an external database like Postgres (Supabase or Neon are good options). The setup mirrors standard deployment steps, minus the container layer complexity.

After provisioning the database, install the pg driver and configure config/database.js to read from a DATABASE_URL in Replit Secrets:

module.exports = ({ env }) => ({
  connection: {
    client: 'postgres',
    connection: env('DATABASE_URL'),
    ssl: { rejectUnauthorized: false },
  },
});

Set your production secrets in the same Secrets panel: APP_KEYS, API_TOKEN_SALT, ADMIN_JWT_SECRET, JWT_SECRET, and NODE_ENV=production. For media uploads, local storage won't survive restarts either. Install @strapi/provider-upload-aws-s3 or the Cloudinary plugin—route files to object storage instead of /public/uploads.

Build and launch:

npm run build && npm start

Deploy with an Autoscale or Reserved VM plan. Free tiers go to sleep, and the Strapi docs are clear about needing always-on hosting for production. Your admin panel appears at your Repl's published URL with /admin appended.

The reality check: Replit's free tier caps CPU and RAM. Great for demos, but real traffic needs an upgrade or dedicated hosting elsewhere.

Configuration Method 2: Connecting a Replit Frontend to External Strapi

When you already have Strapi running on reliable hosting—say Strapi Cloud, Render, or Koyeb—it usually makes more sense to let Replit handle only the frontend. This keeps content management and heavy database work on infrastructure built for it while your UI enjoys Replit's instant previews, AI-assisted coding, and global CDN.

Start by spinning up a new React, Next.js, or Express Repl. In the Secrets tab, add the base URL of your Strapi instance:

STRAPI_BASE_URL=https://my-strapi-app.com

From here, any code running in Replit can read process.env.STRAPI_BASE_URL (or REACT_APP_STRAPI_URL for Create React App) and hit Strapi's REST or GraphQL endpoints. A minimal fetch looks like this:

// src/api/posts.js
export async function getPosts(token) {
  const res = await fetch(
    `${process.env.REACT_APP_STRAPI_URL}/api/posts?populate=*`,
    {
      headers: {
        Authorization: `Bearer ${token}`,
      },
    },
  );
  if (!res.ok) throw new Error('Failed to load posts');
  return res.json();
}

Authentication follows the usual Strapi flow: call /api/auth/local with user credentials, store the returned JWT (localStorage works for most cases), and attach it to subsequent requests as in the snippet above.

Because your frontend now lives on a different domain, Strapi needs to permit it. Open config/middlewares.js in your Strapi project and use a CORS definition that explicitly lists the full Replit URLs you need, or use a function in 'origin' to dynamically allow Replit subdomains:

module.exports = [
  {
    name: 'strapi::cors',
    config: {
      origin: ['https://*.replit.dev', 'https://your-repl.replit.app'],
    },
  },
];

This small change prevents those frustrating Access-Control-Allow-Origin errors.

Once your API calls succeed locally, deploy the frontend via Replit's Deployments panel. The platform serves static assets through a global CDN and proxies API calls over HTTPS, so users experience low-latency content even though Strapi lives elsewhere.

You get clean separation of concerns, scalable backend resources, and the ability to iterate on UI changes without ever touching the CMS infrastructure.

Implementing Environment Variables and Database Configuration

Keeping credentials out of your codebase is non-negotiable. Strapi's own integration guide makes it clear that every secret—from database URLs to JWT salts—belongs in environment variables, not source files. Replit gives you an encrypted Secrets tab, so you add keys there and access them through process.env at runtime.

The essentials usually boil down to DATABASE_URL (or individual values like host, port, name, username, and password), DATABASE_SSL=true for cloud Postgres, security values like APP_KEYS, API_TOKEN_SALT, JWT_SECRET, and NODE_ENV=production plus HOST=0.0.0.0 and a custom PORT for Replit's proxy.

Inside Strapi, reference those variables with the env() helper:

// config/database.js
module.exports = ({ env }) => ({
  connection: {
    client: 'postgres',
    connection: {
      url: env('DATABASE_URL'),
      ssl: env.bool('DATABASE_SSL', false),
    },
  },
});

Use Replit's connectors to integrate with external databases such as Supabase or PlanetScale—these flows help you inject the connection string and may assist with testing, but typically require you to manually provision or authorize the external database project. Any plugin (Cloudinary uploads, Redis caching) follows the same pattern: set its keys in Secrets and read them with env() so configuration changes never trigger a redeploy.

Testing the Integration

Start with a basic connectivity test to verify your API setup works correctly. This simple script catches most configuration issues before they become larger problems:

// testConnection.js
import axios from 'axios';

const res = await axios.get(
  `${process.env.STRAPI_BASE_URL}/api/posts`,
  {
    headers: {
      Authorization: `Bearer ${process.env.STRAPI_API_TOKEN}`,
    },
  }
);
console.log(res.data);

If that returns a payload, your networking, auth tokens, and CORS configuration are working. From there, you can leverage Replit's AI Agent browser simulation to test user flows visually—it helps spot broken requests or missing headers that basic API calls might miss.

For comprehensive testing, consider setting up Jest with Supertest to test your Strapi endpoints in isolated containers. The most common issues you'll encounter include expired JWTs, database connection failures, or blocked origins—all covered in detail by the integration best practices guide.

Project Example: Build a Real-Time Event Platform with Replit and Strapi

Picture a live event listing site where a marketing teammate publishes a workshop in Strapi and, seconds later, the card appears on your Replit-hosted frontend—no rebuilds, no manual deploys. That's the goal of this walkthrough.

Set up Strapi on Strapi Cloud's free tier for your backend. Create a collection type called Event with fields for title, description, date, location, image, and a category enumeration. In the admin panel's Settings → Users & Permissions, grant the Public role find and findOne access, then generate an API token for anything that needs elevated rights.

Open Replit and launch the React template. Fire up the AI Agent with a natural-language prompt—"Build a React app that fetches events from Strapi GraphQL and adds search plus category filters." The system scaffolds components, installs Apollo Client, and wires up environment variables.

The Agent generates a hook like this:

import { gql, useQuery } from '@apollo/client';

const EVENTS_QUERY = gql`
  query Events($search: String, $category: String) {
    events(
      filters: {
        title: { $containsi: $search }
        category: { $eq: $category }
      }
      sort: "date:asc"
      pagination: { pageSize: 20 }
    ) {
      data {
        id
        attributes {
          title
          description
          date
          location
          image { url }
          category
        }
      }
    }
  }
`;

export const useEvents = (variables) => useQuery(EVENTS_QUERY, { variables });

Drop REACT_APP_STRAPI_URL into Replit's Secrets tab and point it at your Cloud instance. Because Strapi serves media from its CDN, you only need to allow Replit's domains in CORS—*.replit.app and *.replit.dev—which you configure in config/middlewares.js.

The styling follows standard React patterns: responsive CSS grid for event cards, skeleton loaders while Apollo fetches data, and date-fns for formatting. For instant content freshness, configure Strapi webhooks that hit a lightweight Replit endpoint clearing Apollo's cache whenever an event changes.

Hit Deploy → Static, and your frontend goes live behind Replit's global CDN. Publish a new event in Strapi; it appears moments later without a page refresh. For user-specific features—say, favoriting an event—implement Strapi's JWT flow and store the token client-side.

Beyond the working app, this exercise showcases clean separation of concerns, leverages managed infrastructure on both ends, and highlights how AI-assisted development trims days of boilerplate down to minutes.

Strapi Open Office Hours

If you have any questions about Strapi 5 or just would like to stop by and say hi, you can join us at Strapi's Discord Open Office Hours, Monday through Friday, from 12:30 pm to 1:30 pm CST: Strapi Discord Open Office Hours.

For more details, visit the Strapi documentation and Replit documentation.