How to expose a private React App running on ECS Fargate via AWS API Gateway

---

title: "🔥 Exposing Private React Apps on AWS: A Step-by-Step Guide" date: 2026-05-13 tags:

• react
• aws
• ecs-fargate
• api-gateway
• nextjs image: "https://images.unsplash.com/photo-1627398242454-45a1465c2479?w=1200&q=80" share: true featured: false description: "Learn how to deploy a private Next.js React application on AWS ECS Fargate and expose it securely through API Gateway, ensuring your application workloads remain private while still accessible to end users."

Introduction

Modern cloud architectures often require a delicate balance between keeping application workloads private and making them accessible to end users over the internet. Amazon Web Services (AWS) provides a robust set of tools to achieve this balance, including ECS Fargate for running containers privately, Application Load Balancer for internal traffic management, and API Gateway for secure exposure of applications. In this post, we will explore how to deploy a Next.js React application as a private ECS Fargate task and expose it securely through API Gateway.

The team at AWS has designed these services to work seamlessly together, allowing developers to focus on building scalable and secure applications without worrying about the underlying infrastructure. By leveraging ECS Fargate, developers can run containers without managing the underlying EC2 instances, while API Gateway provides a secure entry point for API requests. Tanner Linsley, the creator of React Query, often emphasizes the importance of securing React applications, and this approach aligns with those principles.

Deploying a Private Next.js React Application on ECS Fargate

To start, we need to create an ECS Fargate task definition that includes our Next.js React application. This involves creating a Docker image for our application and pushing it to Amazon Elastic Container Registry (ECR). We can then define a task that uses this image and configure the necessary settings for our application. The following is an example of a docker-compose.yml file that defines our Next.js application:

version: '3'
services:
  app:
    build: .
    ports:
      - "3000:3000"
    environment:
      - NODE_ENV=production

We can build and push our Docker image using the following CLI command:

aws ecr get-login-password --region us-west-2 | docker login --username AWS --password-stdin <account_id>.dkr.ecr.us-west-2.amazonaws.com
docker build -t <image_name> .
docker tag <image_name>:latest <account_id>.dkr.ecr.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/<image_name>:latest
docker push <account_id>.dkr.ecr.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/<image_name>:latest

Exposing the Application through API Gateway

Once our application is deployed on ECS Fargate, we can expose it securely through API Gateway using a VPC Link. This involves creating a new API Gateway REST API and configuring a VPC Link to our ECS Fargate task. We can then define API endpoints that proxy requests to our application. The following is an example of an API Gateway configuration:

{
  "swagger": "2.0",
  "info": {
    "title": "My API",
    "version": "1.0.0"
  },
  "paths": {
    "/": {
      "get": {
        "x-amazon-apigateway-integration": {
          "httpMethod": "GET",
          "type": "http",
          "uri": "http://<ecs_fargate_task>:3000"
        }
      }
    }
  }
}

Conclusion

In conclusion, deploying a private Next.js React application on AWS ECS Fargate and exposing it securely through API Gateway is a powerful approach to modern cloud architectures. By following these steps, developers can ensure their application workloads remain private while still accessible to end users. As the team at Vercel notes, "Security is a top priority for any application," and this approach aligns with that principle. As we move forward, we can expect to see more innovative solutions that balance security and accessibility in cloud architectures. By leveraging the power of AWS and React, developers can build scalable, secure, and high-performance applications that meet the needs of modern users.