Railway vs Render vs Fly.io
Compare PaaS hosting costs for web services, APIs, and background workers. Find the cheapest option for your workload.
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Feature Comparison
| Feature | Railway | Render | Fly.io |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free tier | $5 credit/mo | 750h free/mo | $5 credit + generous free |
| Sleep on inactivity | โ Optional | โ ๏ธ On free tier | โ Optional |
| Postgres | โ Built-in | โ Built-in | โ Fly Postgres |
| Redis | โ Built-in | โ Built-in | Via Upstash |
| Custom domains | โ | โ | โ |
| Docker support | โ | โ | โ (native) |
| Multi-region | Limited | Limited | โ Best-in-class |
| Deploy from Git | โ | โ | CLI-first |
| Cron jobs | โ | โ | โ |
| Best for | Quick deploys | Simple apps | Global latency |
When to Choose Each
| Use Case | Best Choice | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Side project / hobby | Fly.io or Render | Generous free tiers |
| Next.js / monorepo | Railway | Best DX, monorepo support |
| Global low-latency API | Fly.io | 30+ regions, anycast |
| Simple web service | Render | Easiest to set up |
| Many microservices | Railway | Per-service billing is predictable |
| Elixir / Phoenix | Fly.io | Official Fly phoenix generators |
Why these three price so differently
Railway and Fly.io both meter usage down to the second -- Railway charges roughly $0.000463 per vCPU-second and $0.0000231 per GB-second of RAM (with a $5/mo minimum per project), while Fly.io charges about $0.0000022 per vCPU-second and $0.00000193 per MB-second of RAM. That granularity rewards apps that scale to zero or sit mostly idle, since you only pay for the seconds actually used. Render takes the opposite approach: a flat $7/mo per service (Starter plan) regardless of how little CPU or RAM that service actually consumes, which trades fine-grained savings for a predictable bill you can budget around in advance.
Bandwidth pricing splits the same way. Railway and Render both give 100GB of outbound traffic free per month, then charge $0.10/GB beyond that. Fly.io is more generous on both ends -- 160GB free, then $0.02/GB after, five times cheaper per gigabyte once you're past the free allowance. That gap matters most for bandwidth-heavy services like video delivery, large API responses, or file downloads, where it can swing the total bill more than the compute pricing does. Run your own CPU, RAM, bandwidth, and service-count numbers through the calculator above rather than assuming one provider's headline free tier tells the whole story.
Frequently asked questions
Which of Railway, Render, or Fly.io is cheapest for a small side project?
Fly.io or Render, depending on how the app behaves when idle. Render offers 750 free instance-hours a month (enough for one always-on service) and Fly.io gives roughly $5/mo of usage credit plus a generous free allowance, while Railway's free tier is a one-time $5 trial credit with no ongoing free quota -- a side project on Railway starts costing money once that credit runs out, even at near-zero usage.
Why is Render's pricing flat while Railway and Fly.io charge per second?
Render's Starter plan is a fixed $7/mo per service regardless of exact usage within the plan's limits, trading precision for predictability. Railway and Fly.io both meter down to the second, so a service that mostly sits idle or scales to zero can end up cheaper than Render's flat fee, while a service running hot 24/7 can end up more expensive than a comparable Render plan.
How does bandwidth pricing differ between the three?
Railway and Render both give 100GB of outbound bandwidth free per month, then charge $0.10/GB after that. Fly.io is cheaper on both fronts: 160GB free before any egress charge, then $0.02/GB after -- five times cheaper per gigabyte once you're past the free allowance. For bandwidth-heavy services, that gap compounds fast.
Which platform is best for a global, multi-region deployment?
Fly.io, by a clear margin. It was built around deploying the same app to 30+ regions with anycast routing so requests hit the nearest edge automatically. Railway and Render both support multi-region in a more limited way, generally requiring you to run and manage separate service instances per region yourself.