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Installing RabbitMQ on Windows

To install RabbitMQ on Windows, install the Erlang runtime first, then run the RabbitMQ Windows installer, which registers RabbitMQ as a Windows service and starts it. Enable the management plugin from the command line and you can administer the broker at http://localhost:15672. The whole process takes about ten minutes.

RabbitMQ is an open-source message broker that passes messages between the parts of a system. The steps below cover a local development and testing setup on a single Windows machine. If you would rather not install Erlang at all, the RabbitMQ Docker setup guide gets you a broker with one command.

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Installing RabbitMQ step by step​

Prerequisites​

  • Windows 10 or Windows 11.
  • Administrative access to the machine.

Step 1: Install Erlang​

RabbitMQ runs on the Erlang runtime, so Erlang goes on the machine first. Download the latest Windows binary from the Erlang downloads page, run it, and accept the defaults unless you need a different install directory. Pick a directory you have write access to.

The Erlang installer sets the ERLANG_HOME environment variable, which is how the RabbitMQ installer finds the runtime. If you installed Erlang by unpacking an archive instead, set ERLANG_HOME yourself to the Erlang root (for example C:\Program Files\erl-<version>) and add %ERLANG_HOME%\bin to Path under Advanced system settings, Environment Variables.

Step 2: Install RabbitMQ​

Download the RabbitMQ Server Windows installer from the RabbitMQ downloads page and double-click it. Follow the prompts, changing the installation directory if you want to. The installer registers RabbitMQ as a Windows service and starts it, so the broker is listening on port 5672 by the time the wizard closes.

Use the 64-bit Erlang build with the 64-bit RabbitMQ installer. An architecture mismatch between the two is the usual reason the service installs but refuses to start.

Step 3: Enable the management plugin​

RabbitMQ ships with a set of plugins. The management plugin is the one worth turning on immediately: it adds a web UI for inspecting queues, connections, and message rates.

Search for 'cmd', right-click it, and run it as administrator, then change to the RabbitMQ sbin directory, usually C:\Program Files\RabbitMQ Server\rabbitmq_server-<version>\sbin. Enable the plugin:

rabbitmq-plugins enable rabbitmq_management

Restart the service so the UI comes up:

rabbitmq-service stop
rabbitmq-service start

Step 4: Open the management console​

Open a browser at http://localhost:15672/ and sign in with guest as both the username and the password, the default account on a fresh install.

Step 5: Verify the installation​

Back in the Command Prompt, run:

rabbitmqctl status

The output lists the node name, the Erlang version the broker is running on, and the listeners it has opened. That is the confirmation the service is actually running rather than merely installed.

Installing with Chocolatey instead​

If you already use the Chocolatey package manager, one command replaces both downloads, because the RabbitMQ package pulls in Erlang as a dependency:

choco install rabbitmq

Run it from an elevated PowerShell prompt. Chocolatey installs to the same location as the graphical installer and registers the same Windows service, so the management plugin and verification steps above still apply. Upgrades then become choco upgrade rabbitmq.

Where to go next​

The guest account only works over a loopback connection, so before anything else reaches this broker you need a real user with a password and permissions. From there, monitoring RabbitMQ covers the metrics worth watching, quorum queues explain how RabbitMQ replicates data, and the cluster setup guide takes the single node you just built and turns it into something that survives a machine going down.