Railway vs Fly.io (2026): Which Is Cheaper for a Small App?

Fly.io is cheaper for a small service that runs all month at a fixed size, and Railway is cheaper when the app idles most of the day or you want a free plan. In our scenario, one 1 vCPU, 1 GB service running 24/7 costs $6.70 a month on a shared-CPU Fly Machine and up to $30 on Railway if it uses its full allocation, or about $7 on Railway Hobby at a light average load. Prices were read on both vendors' pricing pages on October 26, 2026.

The two platforms bill different things, which is why both answers are true. Fly.io charges per second for the Machine size you provision while it runs. Railway charges per second for the CPU and memory your service actually consumes, on top of a plan fee it credits back as usage. Price the same app on each, the way each one bills it, before you choose.

Product	Best for	Entry price	Catch
Railway	Apps that idle, a free plan, teams that want unlimited seats on Pro	Free at $0 with $1 of usage a month; Hobby $5 a month, credited back as usage	A service that keeps a full vCPU busy all month costs $20 for the CPU alone
Fly.io	A fixed-size container that runs all month, multi-region apps, cheap egress	$2.19 a month for the smallest always-on Machine, no plan fee	No free tier, a card after a trial of 2 hours of runtime or 7 days, and a managed Postgres from $38 a month

Toolradar data: Toolradar, the software directory we run, tracks 318 hosting and deployment tools as of October 26, 2026, and 74% of them offer a free, freemium or open-source option, so Fly.io's lack of a free tier is the exception in this category, not the rule. The median cheapest paid plan across the 61 tools that publish one is $20 a month, which is where Railway Pro sits. Both have records there: Railway and Fly.io.

How each bill is built

Fly.io sells Machine sizes and bills them per second while they run. The smallest, a shared-cpu-1x with 256 MB, costs $2.19 a month in its cheapest regions, Ashburn and Secaucus; extra RAM is $6 per GB per month, so the same Machine with 1 GB is $6.70 by Fly's own table. A dedicated performance-1x core with 2 GB is $33. Volumes cost $0.15 per GB per month on provisioned size, a stopped Machine the same rate per GB of root filesystem, and egress $0.02 per GB in North America and Europe, per Fly.io's resource pricing docs. There is no platform fee. Prices rise outside the cheapest regions: the same 1 GB Machine is $7.73 in Frankfurt and $8.50 in Singapore.

Railway sells plans that are minimums and bills what a service uses. Memory costs $10 per GB per month, CPU $20 per vCPU per month, volumes $0.15 per GB per month and egress $0.05 per GB, all metered by the second, per Railway's plans documentation. Hobby is $5 a month and Pro is $20 a month, and each fee includes the same amount of usage. Usage under the included amount adds nothing; usage over it is billed as the difference. A service capped at 1 vCPU and 1 GB only costs the full $30 if it keeps both busy all month, and Railway's own examples show a $3 usage month billed as the Hobby fee alone.

That difference is the whole comparison. A Fly Machine costs the same whether it serves one request or a million. A Railway service costs more as it works harder, with a ceiling set by the allocation you give it and the plan's limits.

The scenario we priced

The app is one web service that needs up to 1 vCPU and 1 GB of RAM, runs all month, and sends 10 GB of outbound traffic. On Fly.io that maps to a shared-cpu-1x Machine with 1 GB of RAM, or a performance-1x Machine if you want a dedicated core. On Railway the service runs with those limits and you pay for what it draws, so we priced two loads: the full allocation, and an average of 0.1 vCPU and 0.5 GB, which is our assumption for a lightly used app, not a vendor figure.

Setup	Compute	Egress, 10 GB	Monthly total
Fly.io, shared-cpu-1x with 1 GB	$6.70	$0.20	$6.90
Fly.io, performance-1x with 2 GB	$33.00	$0.20	$33.20
Railway Hobby, service at full 1 vCPU and 1 GB	$30.00 usage, fee included	$0.50	$30.50
Railway Hobby, service averaging 0.1 vCPU and 0.5 GB	$7.00 usage, fee included	$0.50	$7.50
Railway Pro, same light service	$7.50 usage, under the included amount	$0.00 extra	$20.00

All figures are our arithmetic on the printed rates, for a 30-day month, before tax. At full load Railway costs more than four times the shared Fly Machine; at a light average load the two are within a dollar of each other. The dedicated-core Fly Machine is the expensive option in both cases, which matters if your app needs a guaranteed core rather than a shared one.

The light-load row is the one to test, not trust. Railway bills by the second on actual CPU and memory, so your average matters more than your limit; the Railway dashboard shows both. Fly's number needs no measurement, because the Machine costs the same at any load.

Where the answer flips

Railway wins when the app idles. A dashboard used in office hours, a bot that wakes for a webhook or a staging environment that sleeps at night draws a fraction of its allocation, and Railway bills that fraction. Fly can get there too with auto-stop, which stops an idle Machine and bills only $0.15 per GB of its root filesystem while stopped, but that is a configuration choice with a cold start, not the default.

Fly.io wins when the app is busy all month. A worker that keeps a core busy pays Railway's full vCPU rate in CPU alone, roughly three times what a shared Fly Machine with 1 GB costs all-in. Fly also prints the price in advance; Railway's bill is only known once the month ends, which is why its pricing FAQ is mostly about setting spend limits.

Fly.io wins on egress and regions. Outbound traffic is $0.02 per GB against Railway's $0.05, so 100 GB a month costs $2 against $5, and Fly runs the same app in several regions with per-region pricing. Railway's global regions are available from Hobby, with concurrent regions on Pro.

Railway wins on seats and support. Pro includes unlimited workspace seats and Railway Support; Hobby allows 3 project members. Fly's community support is free and its paid support starts at $29 a month for a 36-hour first response, then $199 and $2,500 a month.

What a Postgres database adds

On Fly.io, the database becomes most of the bill. Managed Postgres starts at $38 a month for the Basic plan, a shared-2x cluster with 1 GB, plus $0.28 per GB of storage used, and Fly's own small-app example comes to $43.67 a month with the app, a 10 GB volume and 10 GB of egress. An unmanaged Fly Postgres, which you run yourself as ordinary Machines and volumes, costs about $2 a month for a single dev node by Fly's estimate, but Fly lists it as unsupported.

On Railway, Postgres is one more metered service. It runs from a template with a volume, so a database that averages 0.25 GB of RAM and 0.1 vCPU with 1 GB of storage costs about $4.65 a month in usage by our arithmetic, on our assumed load. Added to the light web service, the whole app is about $12 on Hobby and stays inside Pro's included usage. Railway includes built-in database and volume backups; Fly's managed plans include high availability, automated backups and connection pooling.

For a solo developer who wants a managed database without running it, that is the clearest gap on the page: about $44 on Fly against about $12 on Railway Hobby for a light app, on our load assumptions. Our best Postgres hosting list covers the hosted alternatives, such as a separate database provider in front of either platform.

Free tiers and trials

Railway has a free plan; Fly.io does not. Railway's Free plan is $0 with $1 of usage a month, 1 project, 3 services, up to 1 vCPU and 0.5 GB per service, a 0.5 GB volume, no custom domain and 3 days of logs. That $1 buys about 36 hours of a fully busy vCPU or 0.1 GB of memory for the month by our arithmetic, so it fits a sleeping demo, not an always-on service. New accounts first get a 30-day trial with a one-time $5 credit and no card, with network restrictions unless Railway verifies the account through GitHub.

Fly.io's docs say plainly that new organizations have no free tier and no monthly free allowance. The trial lasts up to 2 hours of Machine runtime or 7 days, whichever comes first, needs no card, and after it you add a card to keep anything running. The first 10 GB of volume snapshots, the first 10 SSL certificates, inbound traffic and shared IPv4 addresses stay free. Our cloud free tiers compared page lists what other platforms give away.

Fly does offer a discount Railway lacks: reservation blocks, paid a year upfront for 40% off compute, from $36 a year for $5 a month of shared-Machine usage in one region. Railway's discounts are the opposite direction, feature unlocks for monthly commitments of $1,000 and up.

Devshot is a free daily brief for developers that flags pricing changes on platforms like Railway and Fly.io the week they happen. Join at devshot.co.

Limits that matter beyond the bill

• Service size. Railway Hobby allows up to 48 vCPU and 48 GB per service, Pro up to 1,000 vCPU and 1 TB; Fly presets go to performance-16x with 32 GB, with RAM extendable to 128 GB.
• Storage. Railway volumes are capped at 5 GB on Hobby and 1 TB on Pro; both platforms charge $0.15 per GB, and Fly bills on provisioned size even when the volume is detached.
• Plan changes. Railway upgrades apply at once and downgrades at the next cycle; Fly has no plan to change, only Machines to resize.
• Compliance. Fly sells a HIPAA package at $99 a month on any paid account; Railway's HIPAA BAAs start at a $1,000 monthly commitment, with SSO and RBAC at $2,000.
• Billing floor. Railway charges the Hobby fee even in a month with no usage; Fly bills nothing for an organization with no running Machines beyond stopped rootfs and volumes.
• Deploy model. Both deploy from a GitHub repo or a Docker image. Railway adds a project canvas, preview environments and config as code; Fly adds per-region placement and a CLI-first workflow. The Railway review and the Fly.io review cover the day-to-day.

Who should pick which

Pick Railway if the app idles for long stretches, you want a free plan or the Hobby floor, you want Postgres as a cheap metered service, or a team needs seats without a per-head fee. Its pricing explainer walks through Hobby against Pro, and Railway vs Render prices it against the other fixed-instance platform.

Pick Fly.io if the service runs flat out all month, you want a known monthly figure per Machine, you serve traffic from several regions, or egress is a meaningful share of the bill. Its pricing explainer covers Machines, volumes, Postgres and support in full.

If you are leaving Heroku, both are on our Heroku alternatives list, and the migration guide covers the move. The best hosting for indie hackers list widens the field.

How we priced it

We read Railway's pricing page, its plans documentation and its free trial documentation, and Fly.io's pricing page and resource pricing docs, on October 26, 2026. Fly figures use its cheapest regions, Ashburn and Secaucus. Monthly figures assume a 30-day month, as both vendors do. The Railway light-load rows rest on our own assumed averages, stated in the text; the full-load row uses the service's limits. The Toolradar figures come from its hosting and deployment ranking. Prices change, so check both pages before you commit.

Cite this: Devshot, "Railway vs Fly.io (2026): Which Is Cheaper for a Small App?", November 2026.

FAQ

Is Railway or Fly.io cheaper?

It depends on how hard the app works. A 1 vCPU, 1 GB service that runs flat out all month costs $30 in usage on Railway and $6.70 on a shared Fly Machine with 1 GB. The same service averaging a tenth of its CPU and half its memory costs about $7 on Railway Hobby, within a dollar of Fly, on our arithmetic and load assumptions as of October 26, 2026.

Does Fly.io have a free tier?

No. New organizations get a trial of up to 2 hours of Machine runtime or 7 days with no card, then need a card for anything that runs. Some items stay free, including the first 10 GB of volume snapshots, the first 10 SSL certificates, inbound traffic and shared IPv4 addresses.

Does Railway have a free plan?

Yes. The Free plan is $0 with $1 of usage a month, limited to 1 project, 3 services, 1 vCPU and 0.5 GB per service and a 0.5 GB volume, with no custom domain. New accounts also get a 30-day trial with a one-time usage credit and no card.

How much does Postgres cost on each?

Fly.io Managed Postgres starts at $38 a month plus $0.28 per GB of storage, and Fly's own example of a small app with it comes to $43.67 a month. On Railway, Postgres is a metered service, about $4.65 a month in usage for a lightly used database with 1 GB of storage by our arithmetic, inside the Hobby minimum.

Which one bills by the second?

Both, but on different things. Fly.io bills the Machine size you provisioned for every second it runs. Railway bills the CPU and memory your service actually consumes each second, so an idle service costs less than a busy one at the same limits.

Which is better for a team?

Railway Pro includes unlimited workspace seats and Railway Support for its monthly minimum. Fly.io prints no seat fee for organization members either, but paid support starts at $29 a month. A team that needs HIPAA pays $99 a month on Fly and a $1,000 monthly commitment on Railway.

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