Papra on the Raspberry Pi 4

2026-04-01

Papra is a lightweight alternative to PaperlessNGX.

I run them on a Raspberry Pi 4 in a Docker container.

If you want that too:

Create an .env file with an auth secret:

echo "AUTH_SECRET=$(openssl rand -base64 36)" > .env

Create the folders app-data and ingestion:

mkdir app-data ingestion

Create the file docker-compose.yml:

services:
  papra:
    image: ghcr.io/papra-hq/papra:latest-root
    container_name: papra
    restart: unless-stopped
    ports:
      - 1221:1221
    env_file: ".env"
    environment:
      - APP_BASE_URL=http://homelab:1221
      - INGESTION_FOLDER_IS_ENABLED=true
      - DOCUMENTS_OCR_LANGUAGES=deu
    volumes:
      - ./app-data:/app/app-data
      - ./ingestion:/app/ingestion
    user: 1000:1000

Substitute homelab with the hostname of your Raspberry Pi 4!

Change the DOCUMENTS_OCR_LANGUAGES to the languages you want to use (see the documentation for it).

Start up the docker container via:

docker compose -f docker-compose.yml up -d

Open the url which you defined in APP_BASE_URL and register an account.

When you are logged in in Papra, check the url and watch for the string after “organization” (for example org_1GAP1Miap135XEcbKuBQF948).

Open the folder “ingestion” and create a folder with that string and “ingestion” should work.