Deploy TanStack Start to a VPS in Five Minutes

TanStack Start is a full-stack React framework with file-based routing, server functions, and a real SSR build. Most tutorials for it end with “now deploy to Netlify / Vercel / Cloudflare Workers.” Those work, but they’re not your only option. The SSR output is a Node-compatible fetch handler — which means a single Linux box with Tako on it is enough.

Here’s the whole walkthrough. Total wall-clock time, assuming a server is already provisioned: about five minutes.

Step 1 — Scaffold the app

npx @tanstack/cli@latest create my-app
cd my-app

Pick Bun as the package manager when the wizard asks (Node works too — Tako supports both). Add Tailwind or whatever else you want. The default starter is a working SSR app right out of the box.

Add the Tako Vite plugin so the build emits a server entry Tako can launch:

// vite.config.ts
import { defineConfig } from "vite";
import { tanstackStart } from "@tanstack/react-start/plugin/vite";
import { tako } from "tako.sh/vite";

export default defineConfig({
  plugins: [tanstackStart(), tako()],
});

That’s the only framework-side change. The plugin doesn’t replace TanStack Start’s build — it adds a thin wrapper at dist/server/tako-entry.mjs that re-exports the SSR fetch handler in the shape Tako expects.

Step 2 — tako init

tako init

Init is interactive. It detects Bun from your lockfile, sees @tanstack/react-start in package.json, and offers tanstack-start as the preset. Accept the defaults and you’ll get a tako.toml like this:

name = "my-app"
runtime = "bun"
runtime_version = "1.2.x"
preset = "tanstack-start"

[envs.production]
route = "my-app.example.com"
servers = ["prod"]

The tanstack-start preset bakes in main = "dist/server/tako-entry.mjs" and assets = ["dist/client"], so you don’t write either. Init also runs bun add tako.sh so the SDK is in your dependencies, and updates .gitignore so .tako/* is ignored while .tako/secrets.json stays tracked.

Change route to a domain you actually own. Tako will issue a Let’s Encrypt cert for it on first deploy.

Step 3 — tako deploy

If you don’t have a server registered yet, do that once:

tako servers add prod.example.com --name prod

This connects as the tako user, detects arch and libc, and writes the entry to your global config.toml. (How to install tako-server on the box is in the deploy docs — apt install tako-server on Debian / Ubuntu, equivalent on Alpine.)

Then:

tako deploy

Confirm the production prompt and watch the task tree:

Connecting     ✓
Building       ✓
Deploying to prod
  Uploading    ✓
  Preparing    ✓
  Starting     ✓

  https://my-app.example.com/

Open the URL. Your TanStack Start app is live, with a real cert, behind Pingora, running natively on Bun.

What just happened

The deploy ran vite build locally, packaged everything (excluding .git, .tako, .env*, and node_modules) into a .tar.zst artifact, and SFTP’d it to your server. tako-server unpacked it to /opt/tako/my-app/releases/{version}/, ran a production install, and started the SSR bundle directly under Bun. Pingora terminates TLS on :443, the per-app load balancer routes to your process, and the SDK answers Tako’s internal health checks so unhealthy instances drop out automatically.

There is no container, no Node-on-Bun shim, no Lambda cold start. It’s a Linux process started by a service manager on a VPS — but you got there with two commands.

Why this matters

TanStack Start runs anywhere a fetch handler runs: Vercel, Netlify, Cloudflare Workers, Bun on a box. The hosted platforms are the loudest option in the room, and they’re great at what they do — but they aren’t the only option, and the lock-in tradeoff is real. With Tako you keep the same SSR app and the same fetch-handler interface, deployed to hardware you control, with zero-downtime rolling updates and HTTPS in local dev thrown in.

Five minutes from create-start-app to live HTTPS. Try the rest of the CLI reference when you want secrets, multi-server routing, or rollbacks.