How to add Celery, Celerybeat and Redis to a Django website.

, 19 Aug 2026 /
django, celerybeat and redis logo and a celery

Install

Redis-server

sudo apt install redis-server

Python packages

In your python environment

pip install redis celery[redis] django-celery-beat

Celery

Add to settings.py

INSTALLED_APPS += [
    'django_celery_beat',
]

and

CELERY_BROKER_URL = 'redis://localhost:6379'
CELERY_RESULT_BACKEND = 'redis://localhost:6379'

Add a celery.py to /project/webbapp/ with

import os

from celery import Celery

os.environ.setdefault("DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE", "webbapp.settings")

app = Celery("webbapp")
app.config_from_object("django.conf:settings", namespace="CELERY")
app.autodiscover_tasks()

to /project/webbapp/__init__.py add

from .celery import app as celery_app

__all__ = ("celery_app",)

To run management commands

As an example to run the wagtail management command publish_scheduled you can do the following.

Create an app task

In your app add a tasks.py and add this code

from celery import shared_task
from celery.utils.log import get_task_logger
from django.core.management import call_command

logger = get_task_logger(__name__)

@shared_task
def publish_scheduled():
    call_command("publish_scheduled", )
    logger.info("The publish_scheduled task just ran.")

Celery beat

Add your tasks to settings.py

from celery.schedules import crontab

CELERY_BEAT_SCHEDULE = {
    'birdapp657_publish_scheduled': {
        'task': 'birdapp657.tasks.publish_scheduled',
        'schedule': crontab(minute='1,31'),  # Schedule the task to run twice every hour
    }
}

Development

redis-server
redis-cli ping
celery -A webapp worker -l info
celery -A webapp beat -l info -S django

Production

Add a /etc/systemd/system/celery.service

[Unit]
Description=Celery Worker Service
After=network.target redis.target

[Service]
Type=forking
User=webuser
Group=webuser
WorkingDirectory=/project/webbapp
ExecStart=/project/webbapp/venv/bin/celery -A myapp.celery_app worker --loglevel=INFO
ExecStop=/project/webbapp/venv/bin/celery worker stopwait
ExecReload=/project/webbapp/venv/bin/celery worker restart
Restart=always

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

/etc/systemd/system/celerybeat.service

[Unit]
Description=Celery Beat Service
After=network.target redis.target

[Service]
Type=simple
User=webuser
Group=webuser
WorkingDirectory=/project/webbapp
ExecStart=/project/webbapp/venv/bin/celery -A \
myapp.celery_app beat  \
--loglevel=INFO
Restart=always

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl start celery.service celerybeat.service
sudo systemctl enable celery.service celerybeat.service
sudo systemctl status celery.service
sudo systemctl status celerybeat.service