phusion/passenger

A fast and robust web server and application server for Ruby, Python and Node.js

C++

5,092

9,120 commits

updated Oct 5, 2026

See the code

README

Gem Version

passenger logo Phusion Passenger®

Supercharge your Ruby, Node.js and Python apps

Phusion Passenger® is a web server and application server, designed to be fast, robust and lightweight. It takes a lot of complexity out of deploying web apps, adds powerful enterprise-grade features that are useful in production, and makes administration much easier and less complex. Phusion Passenger supports Ruby, Python, Node.js and Meteor, and is being used by high-profile companies such as Apple, Pixar, New York Times, AirBnB, Juniper etc as well as over 650.000 websites.


Phusion Passenger - the smart app server

What makes Passenger so fast and reliable is its C++ core, its zero-copy architecture, its watchdog system and its hybrid evented, multi-threaded and multi-process design.

Learn more:






Installation

Please follow the installation instructions on the website.

Installing the source directly from git

If you mean to install the latest version of Passenger directly from this git repository, then you should run one of the following commands. Installing from the git repository is basically the same as the tarball installation method, as described in the manual, with one exception: you need to clone git submodules:

git submodule update --init --recursive

After that, run one of the following:

./bin/passenger-install-apache2-module

-OR-

./bin/passenger-install-nginx-module

-OR-

# From your application directory
~/path-to-passenger/bin/passenger start

For troubleshooting, configuration and tips, please also refer to the above documentation. For further support, please refer to the Phusion Passenger support page.

Ruby users can also build a gem from the Git repository and install the gem.

gem build passenger.gemspec
gem install passenger-x.x.x.gem

Further reading

"Passenger" and "Phusion Passenger" are registered trademarks of Asynchronous B.V.

application-server
appserver
cloud
nodejs
ruby

phusion/passenger

A fast and robust web server and application server for Ruby, Python and Node.js

C++

5,092

9,120 commits

updated Oct 5, 2026

See the code

README

Gem Version

passenger logo Phusion Passenger®

Supercharge your Ruby, Node.js and Python apps

Phusion Passenger® is a web server and application server, designed to be fast, robust and lightweight. It takes a lot of complexity out of deploying web apps, adds powerful enterprise-grade features that are useful in production, and makes administration much easier and less complex. Phusion Passenger supports Ruby, Python, Node.js and Meteor, and is being used by high-profile companies such as Apple, Pixar, New York Times, AirBnB, Juniper etc as well as over 650.000 websites.


Phusion Passenger - the smart app server

What makes Passenger so fast and reliable is its C++ core, its zero-copy architecture, its watchdog system and its hybrid evented, multi-threaded and multi-process design.

Learn more:






Installation

Please follow the installation instructions on the website.

Installing the source directly from git

If you mean to install the latest version of Passenger directly from this git repository, then you should run one of the following commands. Installing from the git repository is basically the same as the tarball installation method, as described in the manual, with one exception: you need to clone git submodules:

git submodule update --init --recursive

After that, run one of the following:

./bin/passenger-install-apache2-module

-OR-

./bin/passenger-install-nginx-module

-OR-

# From your application directory
~/path-to-passenger/bin/passenger start

For troubleshooting, configuration and tips, please also refer to the above documentation. For further support, please refer to the Phusion Passenger support page.

Ruby users can also build a gem from the Git repository and install the gem.

gem build passenger.gemspec
gem install passenger-x.x.x.gem

Further reading

"Passenger" and "Phusion Passenger" are registered trademarks of Asynchronous B.V.

application-server
appserver
cloud
nodejs
ruby

Project health

Overall

5.2/10

Maintained

10/10

Code review

1/10
OpenSSF Scorecard

RubyGems

Latest release

6.2.0 · Aug 18, 2026

Releases this year

9

Significant stargazers

(top 24 of 45)

Erik Berlin

2,662 followers · starred May 2008

René Scheibe

58 followers · starred Jul 2008

Ryan Bigg

2,162 followers · starred Mar 2008

Evan Phoenix

1,780 followers · starred Mar 2008