Running a Monero Node on a VPS

The full Monero blockchain is large and growing — well over 200 GB at time of writing, so check the current size before you provision. A pruned node (monerod's --prune-blockchain flag) keeps roughly a third of that while still fully validating the chain and serving most wallet needs, which is what most self-hosters run.

For a pruned node, a Master tier VPS (80 GB NVMe, 12 GB RAM) gives comfortable headroom. If you want an unpruned archival node, or plan to grow into other services on the same box, go with an Enterprise tier (120 GB NVMe, 18 GB RAM). NVMe storage matters here — initial sync is I/O-bound, and spinning disks make it dramatically slower.

SSH into your server and update packages before installing anything:

ssh root@YOUR_SERVER_IP
apt update && apt upgrade -y

Download the official Monero CLI release for Linux from the Monero Project's website (getmonero.org) — never from a third-party mirror. Before extracting or running anything, verify the download's PGP signature or checksum against the values published on the official site.

This step matters more than it might seem: a tampered binary running as root on your server is a serious compromise. The official downloads page documents the current verification process — follow it exactly rather than skipping to extraction.

Extract the binaries somewhere sensible, e.g. /opt/monero, and create a data directory for the blockchain, e.g. /data/monero (put this on your largest volume if storage is split).

A reasonable starting config (monerod.conf in your data directory):

data-dir=/data/monero
prune-blockchain=1
rpc-bind-ip=127.0.0.1
rpc-bind-port=18081
confirm-external-bind=0
log-file=/data/monero/monerod.log
log-level=0

Binding RPC to 127.0.0.1 keeps it local-only by default — safer than exposing it to the internet unless you deliberately want to run a public node.

Create /etc/systemd/system/monerod.service:

[Unit]
Description=Monero Daemon
After=network.target

[Service] User=monero ExecStart=/opt/monero/monerod --config-file=/data/monero/monerod.conf --non-interactive Restart=on-failure

[Install] WantedBy=multi-user.target

Create a dedicated non-root user for the service (useradd -r -s /usr/sbin/nologin monero, then chown the data directory to it) rather than running monerod as root. Then enable and start it:

systemctl daemon-reload
systemctl enable --now monerod

Check progress with:

monerod status

or by tailing the log file. Initial sync time depends heavily on disk speed and network throughput — on NVMe with good bandwidth it's commonly done well within a day; on slower hardware it can take considerably longer. Adding --fast-block-sync=1 (the default in recent releases) speeds this up by trusting checkpointed blocks rather than fully validating ancient history block-by-block, while still verifying the chain from the checkpoint forward.

Once synced, connect a wallet to your own node instead of a public remote node — this is the entire point of running one. In the official GUI wallet, choose "Connect to a specific node" and enter 127.0.0.1:18081 if the wallet runs on the same server, or your server's IP and a firewalled port if connecting remotely.

If you want to connect from elsewhere, don't just open 18081 to the world — use the restricted RPC mode (--restricted-rpc, typically on port 18089) which limits what remote callers can do, and put it behind a firewall rule (ufw allow from YOUR_IP to any port 18089) or a WireGuard tunnel rather than leaving it open to everyone.