Ports and allocation

The allocation pool

Pier reserves a configurable range — default 10000–65000, overridable with PIER_PORT_RANGE_START and PIER_PORT_RANGE_END — for internal service ports. When you deploy a service that expects a port, Pier picks the next free one from this pool and stores it in the database.

Port 80 and 443 belong to Traefik.
Port 8443 (default) is the Pier dashboard.

Because managed containers never bind host ports (see Networking), the allocation pool is only used for Traefik → container routing.

What this gives you

• No port clashes between services — even with 50 services on one host, every internal port is unique.
• No need to remember port numbers — Pier shows the allocated port in the service Overview.
• The same Compose stack can be deployed multiple times under different names.