Learn how to fix the ECONNREFUSED error in MongoDB. Our MongoDB Support team is here to help you with your questions and concerns.

ECONNREFUSED error in MongoDB

One of the common connection errors in MongoDB while trying to connect to the database server locally is the ECONNREFUSED error.

Especially when attempting to connect to the MongoDB server using a certain URI. Today, we are going to take a look at the causes of this error and how to fix them.

Port Already in Use

The ECONNREFUSED error often pops up due to different reasons. In fact, one of the common cases is when the specified port is already in use by another service. We can check for this with these commands:

$ lsof -i:port_number
$ kill -9 pid


Here, we have to replace ‘port_number’ with the port we are trying to connect to. This will help you identify and terminate the process using that port.

MongoDB server not running

Alternatively, the error may be due to our MongoDB server not running. We can verify the status of our Mongoose server as seen here:

$ mongod

Additionally, we have to make sure the localhost is configured correctly. Our experts recommend using ‘127.0.0.1:27017’ instead of ‘localhost’ in our connection URI.

Node.js Update Impact

Sometimes the issue is due to recent Node.js updates like version 18.1.0. We can check our Node.js version with this command:

$ node -v

Update MongoDB Compass Connection URL

The first solution involves updating the MongoDB Compass connection URL from ‘mongodb://localhost:27017’ to either ‘mongodb://127.0.0.1:27017’ or ‘mongodb://0.0.0.0:27017’. We have to replace ‘localhost’ with ‘127.0.0.1’ in our connection strings.

For example:

IPv6 Configuration for MongoDB

Next, we can configure MongoDB with IPv6 settings to ensure compatibility. Start MongoDB with one of the following configurations:

Option 1:
net:
ipv6: true
bindIpAll: true

Option 2:
net:
ipv6: true
bindIp: localhost


We can use these commands if MongoDB is not running as a service:

mongod --bind_ip_all --ipv6 <other options>

Alternatively, we can use this code snippet for our MongoDB connection setup:

Make sure ‘mongod’ is running while starting the server.

Let us know which one of the above troubleshooting steps helped fix the ECONNREFUSED error in MongoDB.

[Need assistance with a different issue? Our team is available 24/7.]

Conclusion

Today, our Support Engineers demonstrated how to fix the ECONNREFUSED error in MongoDB.