What is Airpipe?

AirPipe moves files between two devices using a shared passphrase. The sender chooses a file and receives a short phrase; the recipient types it in a terminal, on a web page, or scans a QR code. The data then flows peer-to-peer with end-to-end encryption (NaCl secretbox over DTLS/WebRTC), so the relay never sees the plaintext. When the recipient is offline, a mailbox option stores the encrypted file for up to ten minutes. The relay is a single Go binary (~15 MB Docker image) with an embedded web UI, self-hostable via Docker or docker-compose. The command-line client runs on Linux, macOS, and Windows (amd64/arm64) and installs through a shell script or 'go install'. No accounts or authentication are needed — the passphrase is the only secret.

Should you self-host Airpipe?

Airpipe scores 49/100 on selfhost.directory (how scoring works) and ranks #50 of 86 in File Sharing. It has 358 GitHub stars.

It shipped 12 stable releases in the past year. The latest, v4.4.0, came out on 29 August 2026.

Setup is easy: most people get it running in one sitting. An official Docker image is available. It is MIT-licensed and written mostly in Go.

Its closest alternative on selfhost.directory is copyparty (82/100, 47 153 stars). It scores higher overall, so compare the two before you pick. See Airpipe vs copyparty side by side.

Features

Browser-to-browser transfers
CLI with multi-file and folder support
End-to-end encryption
Health and metrics endpoints
Mailbox mode (offline receive)
NAT traversal with relay fallback
Passphrase-based pairing
Peer-to-peer file transfer
Self-hostable relay

How to install Airpipe

Install Airpipe with Docker

Environment variables

PORT, AIRPIPE_ALLOWED_ORIGINS, AIRPIPE_RATE_LIMIT_PER_MIN, AIRPIPE_MAX_UPLOAD_MB, AIRPIPE_FILE_EXPIRY, AIRPIPE_MINIMAL_UI, AIRPIPE_PUBLIC_STATS, AIRPIPE_TRUST_PROXY_HEADERS

docker run -p 8080:8080 ghcr.io/sanyam-g/airpipe-relay

Maps container port 8080 to host port 8080; all config via environment variables.

Install Airpipe with Docker Compose

Environment variables

PORT, AIRPIPE_ALLOWED_ORIGINS, AIRPIPE_RATE_LIMIT_PER_MIN, AIRPIPE_MAX_UPLOAD_MB, AIRPIPE_FILE_EXPIRY, AIRPIPE_MINIMAL_UI, AIRPIPE_PUBLIC_STATS, AIRPIPE_TRUST_PROXY_HEADERS

docker compose up -d

services: relay: image: ghcr.io/sanyam-g/airpipe-relay:latest container_name: airpipe-relay restart: unless-stopped ports: - "8088:8080" # environment: # AIRPIPE_MINIMAL_UI: "true" # just the send/receive page at / # AIRPIPE_PUBLIC_STATS: "true" # expose /metrics + live stats in /health labels: com.centurylinklabs.watchtower.enable: "true"

Optional. Polls ghcr.io every 5 min and auto-pulls + restarts any container

with the watchtower.enable=true label. Drop this service if you want to

control upgrades manually.

watchtower: image: containrrr/watchtower container_name: airpipe-watchtower restart: unless-stopped volumes: - /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock environment: DOCKER_API_VERSION: "1.40" WATCHTOWER_LABEL_ENABLE: "true" WATCHTOWER_CLEANUP: "true" WATCHTOWER_POLL_INTERVAL: "300"

Includes optional Watchtower auto-updater; maps host port 8088 to container port 8080.