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Hiero Local Node Deprecation (September 2026) Hiero Local Node is entering a 6-month deprecation period. Support ends September 2026. Migrate local testing and CI workflows to Solo before then. Learn more.
Looking for the recommended replacement? Solo is a Kubernetes-native local network that replaces Local Node and is compatible with the Hiero SDKs. See the Solo quickstart to get started.
The Hedera Local Node project enables developers to establish their own local network for development and testing. The local network comprises the consensus node, mirror node, JSON-RPC relay, and other Hedera products, and can be set up using the CLI tool and Docker. This setup allows you to seamlessly build and deploy smart contracts from your local environment. By the end of this tutorial, you’ll be equipped to run a Hedera local node and generate keys, allowing you to test your projects and deploy projects in your local environment.

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Prerequisites

  • Node.js >= v14.x
  • NPM >= v6.14.17
  • Minimum 16GB RAM
  • Docker >= v20.10.x
  • Docker Compose >= v2.12.3
  • Have Docker running on your machine with the correct configurations.
Ensure the VirtioFS file sharing implementation is enabled in the docker settings.
Ensure the following configurations are set at minimum in Docker Settings -> Resources and are available for use:
  • CPUs: 6
  • Memory: 8GB
  • Swap: 1 GB
  • Disk Image Size: 64 GB
Ensure the Allow the default Docker sockets to be used (requires password) is enabled in Docker Settings -> Advanced.
Note: The image may look different if you are on a different version
Local node can be run using Docker or NPM but we will use Docker for this tutorial. Here are the installation steps for NPM.

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Table of Contents

  1. Start Your Local Network
  2. Generate Keys
  3. Stop Your Local Network
  4. Additional Resources

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Start Your Local Network

Open a new terminal and navigate to your preferred directory where your Hedera Local Node project will live. Run the following command to clone the repo and install dependencies to your local machine:
For Windows users: You will need to update the file endings of compose-network/mirror-node/init.sh by running this in WSL:
Ensure Docker is installed and open on your machine before running this command to get the network up and running:

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Generate Keys

To generate accounts with random private keys, run the generate-accounts command. Specify the number of accounts generated by appending the number to the hedera generate-account command. For example, to generate 5 accounts, run hedera generate-accounts 5.
Please note: Since the first 10 accounts generated are with predefined private keys, if you need 5 generated with random keys, you will run hedera start 15. The same rule applies when you use the hedera generate-accounts command.
Grab any of the account private keys generated from the Alias ECDSA keys Accounts list. This will be used as the LOCAL_NODE_OPERATOR_PRIVATE_KEY environment variable value in your .env file of your project.

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Stop Your Local Network

To stop your local node, you can run the hedera stop command. If you want to keep any files created manually in the working directory, please save them before executing this command.
Alternatively, run docker compose down -v; git clean -xfd; git reset --hard to stop the local node and reset it to its original state.
📣 Note: All available commands can be checked out here.

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Additional Resources

➡ Hedera Local Node Repository ➡ Hedera Local Node CLI Tool Commands ➡ Hedera Local Node Docker Setup [Video Tutorial]