ComfyUI-Manager: Installing and Managing ComfyUI Custom Nodes

What ComfyUI-Manager solves, and for whom

ComfyUI itself ships with a node graph editor and no package manager. Adding a custom node means finding its repository, cloning it into the right folder, installing its Python dependencies, and restarting. Removing one means reversing that by hand, and a bad node can leave ComfyUI failing to start. ComfyUI-Manager exists to move that work into the UI. The README describes it as an extension that offers management functions to install, remove, disable, and enable various custom nodes of ComfyUI, plus a hub feature and convenience functions to access information inside ComfyUI.

The audience is anyone running ComfyUI with third-party nodes: people following workflows that depend on specific node packs, and people who want to try nodes without hand-editing a directory. It is not aimed at users who run ComfyUI with no custom nodes at all, where the extension adds a dependency tree (GitPython, PyGithub, matrix-nio, transformers, huggingface-hub, typer, rich and others per pyproject.toml) for capabilities they will not use.

The Manager button, the install dialog and three DB modes

The interaction surface is a Manager button on the main menu. Clicking it opens a dialog with Install Custom Nodes and Install Models entries, and those open installer dialogs with per-item buttons: Installed means the item is already present, Install means it can be installed, and Try Install marks a custom node whose installation information cannot be confirmed.

Behind the list sits a database with three selectable modes. DB: Channel (1day cache) reads channel cache information with a one-day validity period and is the default every time ComfyUI starts. DB: Local reads information stored inside ComfyUI-Manager, updated only when you update ComfyUI-Manager itself. DB: Channel (remote) always pulls the latest list. According to the README, when retrieval fails because of a network error, the extension forcibly falls back to local information. That fallback is the reason the button keeps working offline, but it also means a stale list can look current with no visible warning.

The repository layout backs this up: custom-node-list.json, model-list.json, alter-list.json and extension-node-map.json sit at the top level, with a node_db/ directory, and Fetch Updates is the menu entry that retrieves update data locally. The README is explicit that Fetch Updates only fetches; the Update button inside Install Custom Nodes is what applies an update.

Installing ComfyUI-Manager and installing your first custom node

The general method assumes ComfyUI already exists. Change into its custom_nodes directory, clone the repository under the exact name comfyui-manager, and restart ComfyUI.

cd ComfyUI/custom_nodes
git clone https://github.com/ltdrdata/ComfyUI-Manager comfyui-manager
# restart ComfyUI

After the restart, a Manager button should appear on the main menu. The README's installation precautions are unusually blunt about what breaks this: the files must be located at ComfyUI/custom_nodes/comfyui-manager, you should not decompress an archive directly into custom_nodes, and paths like ComfyUI/custom_nodes/ComfyUI-Manager/ComfyUI-Manager or ComfyUI/custom_nodes/ComfyUI-Manager-main are wrong. In those cases the README says the Manager may operate but will not be recognized within ComfyUI-Manager and updates cannot be performed, with a risk of duplicate installations.

If you would rather have ComfyUI and ComfyUI-Manager installed together, the README marks comfy-cli as the recommended route. It needs Python 3 and git, and on Linux or macOS the sequence is a virtual environment, then the CLI, then install.

python -m venv venv
. venv/bin/activate
pip install comfy-cli
comfy install

On Windows the same block uses venv\Scripts\activate instead of the source line. Once ComfyUI is running with Manager present, open the Manager dialog, pick Install Custom Nodes, and use the Install button on the node you want; the dialog reports Installed for anything already present. For a node you cannot install from the UI, the README directs you to the Try Install path, which is labelled as a node whose installation information cannot be confirmed. The repository also carries cm-cli.py and cm-cli.sh, and an openapi.yaml at the top level, so a command-line surface exists, though the README does not document its commands.

Where ComfyUI-Manager fails or is the wrong tool

The most common failure is placement, and it is not self-announcing. The README states that a Manager installed under a wrong directory name may still operate but will not be recognized within ComfyUI-Manager, which means the extension can appear to work while its own update mechanism quietly does not. If you installed from a zip, the fix is to remove every ComfyUI-Manager file from ComfyUI/custom_nodes and clone properly instead.

There is no documented rollback. The README describes install, remove, disable, enable and update, but it never describes reverting an update to a previous version, and no recent releases were retrieved. If you need to pin a custom node to a known-good commit, the Manager UI as documented here is not that tool.

The DB modes are a second trap. Channel (1day cache) is the default on every start, so a node published in the last day may not appear until the cache expires or you switch to Channel (remote). Conversely, if the remote fetch fails, the README says local information is used forcibly, so you can be looking at an old list without realizing it. The Local mode is meant for custom node developers registering their nodes in custom-node-list.json, not for end users who want the newest catalog.

Finally, this is not a dependency resolver for your ComfyUI environment. It installs custom nodes and their declared dependencies; it does not reconcile conflicting requirements across node packs, and it does not manage ComfyUI itself.

comfy-cli and the portable installer: different approaches to the same job

The closest alternative in the README's own framing is comfy-cli, which the project labels as the recommended option. The difference is scope and level. comfy-cli installs and manages ComfyUI from the command line and can bring ComfyUI-Manager along with it in one step (comfy install), so it treats the whole installation as the unit of management. ComfyUI-Manager treats the running ComfyUI instance as the unit and manages nodes from inside the UI. If your problem is getting a working ComfyUI on a fresh machine, comfy-cli addresses it; if your problem is that a workflow needs four more node packs, the Manager dialog does.

Windows portable users get a third route: a batch script, install-manager-for-portable-version.bat, downloaded into the ComfyUI_windows_portable directory and double-clicked. It assumes git is installed. Linux users with a venv get install-comfyui-venv-linux.sh, which installs ComfyUI with ComfyUI-Manager into a subdirectory and generates an executable script; the README notes ComfyUI is then started with ./run_gpu.sh or ./run_cpu.sh. These scripts are the same product delivered by a different mechanism, not a competing design.

Maintenance, licence and upgrade cost

The repository is not archived, and the last push was on 2026-09-18, three days before this writing, so the project is being worked on. Version 3.42 appears in pyproject.toml. The README's notice list is the best signal of upgrade cost: V3.38 was a security patch that migrated Manager data to a protected path and shipped a migration guide under docs/en; V3.16 added uv support behind a use_uv key in config.ini; V3.10 removed the double-click feature and moved it to a separate project; V3.3.2 was an overhaul that added official support for registry.comfy.org. That is a steady stream of behaviour changes, and the v3.38 migration is the kind that can require reading a document before upgrading rather than clicking Update.

Licensing: the project is GPL-3.0, with LICENSE.txt at the repository root and pyproject.toml declaring license = { file = "LICENSE.txt" }. GPL-3.0 is a copyleft licence, so if you redistribute a modified ComfyUI-Manager or bundle it into a product, the obligations differ from permissive licences. This is a description of the licence identifier, not legal advice; check with your own counsel before shipping it inside a commercial distribution. Running it locally for your own image generation is a different situation from redistributing it.

Editorial conclusion

Adopt ComfyUI-Manager if you run ComfyUI with custom nodes and want install, update and disable handled from the UI; the pyproject.toml requires Python 3.9 or newer, and the README states the files must sit exactly at ComfyUI/custom_nodes/comfyui-manager. Do not adopt it if you cannot keep that path exact, or if you need documented rollback, which the README does not cover. Before installing, check your ComfyUI layout and confirm the clone directory name.

Frequently asked questions

Official sources

1. Comfy-Org/ComfyUI-Manager on GitHub
2. Issues
3. License: GPL-3.0
4. README