Configure custom SSL certificate authorities

You can add your own certificate authority (CA) or self-signed certificate to n8n. This means you are able to trust a certain SSL certificate instead of trusting all invalid certificates, which is a potential security risk.

Feature availability

You can use your own certificate authority or self-signed certificate starting from n8n 1.42.0.

To use this feature you need to place your certificates in a folder and mount the folder to /opt/custom-certificates in the container. The external path that you map to /opt/custom-certificates must be writable by the container.

Docker

The examples below assume you have a folder called pki that contains your certificates in either the directory you run the command from or next to your docker compose file.

Docker CLI

When using the CLI you can use the -v flag from the command line:

docker run -it --rm \
 --name n8n \
 -p 5678:5678 \
 -v ./pki:/opt/custom-certificates \
 n8nio/n8n

Docker Compose

name: n8n
services:
    n8n:
        volumes:
            - ./pki:/opt/custom-certificates
        container_name: n8n
        ports:
            - 5678:5678
        image: n8nio/n8n

You should also give the right permissions to the imported certs. You can do this once the container is running (assuming n8n as the container name):

docker exec --user 0 n8n chown -R 1000:1000 /opt/custom-certificates

Certificate requirements for Custom Trust Store

Supported certificate types:

• Root CA Certificates: these are certificates from Certificate Authorities that sign other certificates. Trust these to accept all certificates signed by that CA.

• Self-Signed Certificates: certificates that servers create and sign themselves. Trust these to accept connections to that specific server only.

You must use PEM format:

• Text-based format with BEGIN/END markers

• Supported file extensions: .pem, .crt, .cer

• Contains the public certificate (no private key needed)

For example:

-----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----
MIIDXTCCAkWgAwIBAgIJAKoK/heBjcOuMA0GCSqGSIb3DQEBBQUAMEUxCzAJBgNV
[base64 encoded data]
-----END CERTIFICATE-----

The system doesn't accept:

• DER/binary format files

• PKCS#7 (.p7b) files

• PKCS#12 (.pfx, .p12) files

• Private key files

• Convert these formats to PEM before use.

Related resources

• Configuration examples