ValueError: Custom authentication is only available in Managed Cloud or Enterprise — issue when self-hosting LangGraph

[ivrschool]

Checked other resources

• This is a bug, not a usage question. For questions, please use GitHub Discussions.
• I added a clear and detailed title that summarizes the issue.
• I read what a minimal reproducible example is (https://stackoverflow.com/help/minimal-reproducible-example).
• I included a self-contained, minimal example that demonstrates the issue INCLUDING all the relevant imports. The code run AS IS to reproduce the issue.

Example Code

.json
{
    "base_image": "langchain/langgraph-api",
    "_INTERNAL_docker_tag": "3.13",
    "dockerfile_lines": [
    "RUN curl -Ls https://astral.sh/uv/install.sh | sh"
    ],
    "dockerfile_lines": [],
    "graphs": {
      "task_maistro": "./agent/task_maistro.py:graph"
    },
    "auth": {
      "path": "./agent/auth/auth.py:auth"
    },
    "env": "./.env",
    "dependencies": ["./"]
    
    
  }

Error Message and Stack Trace (if applicable)

2025-07-07T22:03:22.227561Z [info     ] HTTP Request: GET https://api.smith.langchain.com/auth?langgraph-api=true "HTTP/1.1 200 OK" [httpx] api_revision=e9f4a79 api_variant=licensed langgraph_api_version=0.2.82 thread_name=MainThread
2025-07-07T22:03:22.228954Z [warning  ] No license key found, running in test mode with LangSmith API key. For production use, set LANGGRAPH_CLOUD_LICENSE_KEY in environment. [langgraph_license.validation] api_revision=e9f4a79 api_variant=licensed langgraph_api_version=0.2.82 thread_name=MainThread
2025-07-07T22:03:22.230752Z [error    ] Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.12/site-packages/starlette/routing.py", line 694, in lifespan
    async with self.lifespan_context(app) as maybe_state:
               ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.12/contextlib.py", line 210, in __aenter__
    return await anext(self.gen)
           ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.12/site-packages/langgraph_runtime_postgres/lifespan.py", line 56, in lifespan
  File "/api/langgraph_license/validation.py", line 295, in get_license_status
ValueError: Custom authentication is currently available in the Managed Cloud version of LangGraph Platform or with an self-hosting enterprise license. Please visit https://langchain-ai.github.io/langgraph/concepts/deployment_options/ to learn more about deployment options, or contact [email protected] for information on upgrading from the self-hosted Lite plan to an enterprise license.
 [uvicorn.error] api_revision=e9f4a79 api_variant=licensed langgraph_api_version=0.2.82 thread_name=MainThread
2025-07-07T22:03:22.230923Z [error    ] Application startup failed. Exiting. [uvicorn.error] api_revision=e9f4a79 api_variant=licensed langgraph_api_version=0.2.82 thread_name=MainThread

Description

Hi team,

I’m encountering the following error when running the server locally:

File "/api/langgraph_license/validation.py", line 295, in get_license_status
ValueError: Custom authentication is currently available in the Managed Cloud version of LangGraph Platform or with a self-hosting enterprise license.

Has anyone successfully solved this for the self-hosted version?

According to the documentation:

Self-Hosted

• No default authentication
• Complete flexibility to implement your security model
• You control all aspects of authentication and authorization

This seems to suggest that custom authentication should be possible in the self-hosted setup.

Here’s what I’ve tried so far:

• I built the image locally using langgraph build -t my-image, which completes without issues.
• But when I run the server locally, I hit the ValueError above.
• I also looked into issue #3421, but that led to additional environment-related errors (uv not found) that I couldn't resolve.
• I have tried with different tags but the one that is successfully building the images are raising the same issue.

System Info

Is there an official or community-supported way to bypass or configure this behavior for local self-hosted testing?

Thanks in advance.

[hinthornw]

This is not a bug. It's a usage question.

[hinthornw]

Is there an official or community-supported way to bypass or configure this behavior for local self-hosted testing?

The official way to test is to use langgraph dev.

If you want to run langgraph up or a similar full runtime, then you'd include your enterprise license key