# DigitalOcean App Platform vs Railway

Canonical: https://inetgeek.com/compare/digitalocean-app-platform-vs-railway/

Every value below is read from DigitalOcean App Platform's and Railway's own documentation. See https://inetgeek.com/methodology/ for how.

## At a glance

| Criterion | DigitalOcean App Platform | Railway |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Free tier | Yes | Yes |
| What the free plan includes | Up to three apps that use only static site components. Anything with a running service falls outside the free tier. | A $0 plan alongside Hobby at $5 and Pro at $20. Deployment images on the free and trial tier are retained 24 hours, against 72 on Hobby. |
| Entry paid plan | $5.00 per month for the smallest container: 1 shared vCPU, 512 MiB of RAM and 50 GiB of bandwidth. | $5 / month (Hobby) |
| Memory (entry plan) | 512 MiB on the $5.00 container, the cheapest paid size; 1 GiB from $10.00. | 48 GB on Hobby ($5/month) — but that is a ceiling, not an allocation. Railway's table states the figure is a maximum including replica multiplication, so it is 8 GB across each of up to 6 replicas, and memory is billed at $10 per GB per month on top of the $5 fee. Recorded without a magnitude because a cap you pay for is not comparable with an allowance you are given. |
| Autoscaling | Limited | Limited |
| Regions | Thirteen regions: NYC, AMS, SFO, SGP, LON, FRA, TOR, BLR, SYD, ATL, RIC, MKC and MEM. The availability table marks dynamic and static-site components separately, but those marks are images, so which app type is offered where is not readable as text. | 4 regions: California, Virginia, Amsterdam, Singapore |
| Uptime SLA | 99.95% monthly uptime, promised separately for each App Platform App Component Instance rather than for the account. Below it, service credits run 10%, 30% and upward as the month gets worse. | Published as availability targets rather than a contractual SLA: 99.9% on Hobby, 99.99% on Pro, 99.999% on Enterprise, which also adds support SLOs. |
| Support on entry paid plan | The DigitalOcean account-level support plans, not an App Platform product: free ticket-based support 24/7 for everyone, then Developer $24/month, Standard $99/month with live chat, Premium $999/month with a dedicated Slack channel. | Community support on Trial and on Hobby, the entry paid plan. Pro gets "Railway support"; Enterprise adds support SLOs. |

## Where they differ

### What the free plan includes

- DigitalOcean App Platform: Up to three apps that use only static site components. Anything with a running service falls outside the free tier. ([source](https://docs.digitalocean.com/products/app-platform/details/pricing/))
- Railway: A $0 plan alongside Hobby at $5 and Pro at $20. Deployment images on the free and trial tier are retained 24 hours, against 72 on Hobby. ([source](https://docs.railway.com/reference/pricing/plans))

### Entry paid plan

- DigitalOcean App Platform: $5.00 per month for the smallest container: 1 shared vCPU, 512 MiB of RAM and 50 GiB of bandwidth. ([source](https://docs.digitalocean.com/products/app-platform/details/pricing/))
- Railway: $5 / month (Hobby) ([source](https://docs.railway.com/reference/pricing/plans))

### Memory (entry plan)

- DigitalOcean App Platform: 512 MiB on the $5.00 container, the cheapest paid size; 1 GiB from $10.00. ([source](https://docs.digitalocean.com/products/app-platform/details/pricing/))
- Railway: 48 GB on Hobby ($5/month) — but that is a ceiling, not an allocation. Railway's table states the figure is a maximum including replica multiplication, so it is 8 GB across each of up to 6 replicas, and memory is billed at $10 per GB per month on top of the $5 fee. Recorded without a magnitude because a cap you pay for is not comparable with an allowance you are given. ([source](https://docs.railway.com/reference/pricing/plans))

### Regions

- DigitalOcean App Platform: Thirteen regions: NYC, AMS, SFO, SGP, LON, FRA, TOR, BLR, SYD, ATL, RIC, MKC and MEM. The availability table marks dynamic and static-site components separately, but those marks are images, so which app type is offered where is not readable as text. ([source](https://docs.digitalocean.com/products/app-platform/details/availability/))
- Railway: 4 regions: California, Virginia, Amsterdam, Singapore ([source](https://docs.railway.com/reference/regions))

### Uptime SLA

- DigitalOcean App Platform: 99.95% monthly uptime, promised separately for each App Platform App Component Instance rather than for the account. Below it, service credits run 10%, 30% and upward as the month gets worse. ([source](https://www.digitalocean.com/sla/app-platform))
- Railway: Published as availability targets rather than a contractual SLA: 99.9% on Hobby, 99.99% on Pro, 99.999% on Enterprise, which also adds support SLOs. ([source](https://railway.com/pricing))

### Support on entry paid plan

- DigitalOcean App Platform: The DigitalOcean account-level support plans, not an App Platform product: free ticket-based support 24/7 for everyone, then Developer $24/month, Standard $99/month with live chat, Premium $999/month with a dedicated Slack channel. ([source](https://docs.digitalocean.com/platform/support-plans/))
- Railway: Community support on Trial and on Hobby, the entry paid plan. Pro gets "Railway support"; Enterprise adds support SLOs. ([source](https://railway.com/pricing))

## Which should you choose?

Pick DigitalOcean App Platform if Apps deployed from a Git repository or a container image where a flat per-container price is easier to reason about than usage metering — $5 a month buys 1 shared vCPU, 512 MiB and 50 GiB of bandwidth.

Pick Railway if Teams that want a plan fee which doubles as usage credit, and deploy services straight from a Dockerfile without managing servers. The $5 Hobby fee comes back as $5 of resource usage.

Consider something else: DigitalOcean App Platform — The free tier covers static sites only, three apps with no running service, and autoscaling is listed only against the dedicated container sizes — a small service scales by hand or not at all.

Consider something else: Railway — You need to run in a region outside California, Virginia, Amsterdam or Singapore.

## Documented by only one

- Kind of free offer: Railway: Free tier
- Pricing model: Railway: A base subscription fee that goes towards usage, with the plan's own credit included; anything beyond the credit is billed as resource usage.
- Egress over allowance: Railway: $0.05 / GB
- When you exceed a cap: Railway: Billed automatically: on the Hobby plan ($5/month, includes $5 of resource usage) usage above the included amount is charged as a delta on top of the subscription — no throttling or suspension is documented
- Storage (entry plan): Railway: 0.5 GB of volume storage on Free and up to 5 GB on Hobby ($5/month) — a ceiling, not an allocation, and volume storage is billed on usage rather than included. Recorded without a magnitude for the same reason as this record's memory figure: a cap you pay for is not comparable with an allowance you are given.
- Sites or apps included: Railway: 50 projects and 50 services per project on Hobby; Pro raises both to 100 and Enterprise is unlimited.
- Monthly visits cap: Railway: No monthly visit or bandwidth cap is published. Rate limits are platform-wide: about 11,000 HTTP requests per second to a domain, and 10,000 concurrent connections.
- Included bandwidth: DigitalOcean App Platform: 50 GiB a month on the $5.00 container, rising with size to 900 GiB on the largest dedicated one.
- Max request duration: Railway: 15 minutes while data keeps transferring; closed after 5 minutes with no data transferred. Websocket connections are exempt and can stay open indefinitely.
- Streaming response limit: Railway: Platform-wide: an HTTP request may run up to 15 minutes while data keeps transferring, and is closed after 5 minutes with none. Idle HTTP/1.1 connections close after 60 seconds between requests. WebSocket connections are exempt. Railway documents the connection's duration here, not how the response is delivered.
- Managed connection pooling: Railway: Supported
- Git deployment: Railway: Supported
- Docker deployment: Railway: Supported
- Scheduled jobs: Railway: Supported
- Persistent processes: Railway: Supported
- Persistent storage: Railway: Supported
- Managed databases: Railway: Limited
- Edge network: Railway: Supported
- Scales to zero: Railway: Limited — Serverless sleeps an idle service, but a slept service still holds a slot and is de-prioritised.
- Response time commitment: DigitalOcean App Platform: Under 8 hours on Developer ($24/month), the cheapest paid support plan; under 24 hours free, under 2 hours on Standard, under 30 minutes on Premium. Account-level and not severity-based.
- SOC 2: Railway: SOC 2 Type 2 and SOC 3 reports available via Railway's Trust Center.
- HIPAA: Railway: Listed under Compliance certifications, with a dedicated report available.
- GDPR / data residency: Railway: Listed in the Trust Center's Compliance section.
- Encryption at rest: Railway: Documented as a Data Security feature.

## Questions this comparison answers

**Entry paid plan: DigitalOcean App Platform or Railway?**

DigitalOcean App Platform: $5.00 per month for the smallest container: 1 shared vCPU, 512 MiB of RAM and 50 GiB of bandwidth.
Railway: $5 / month (Hobby)

**Should I choose DigitalOcean App Platform or Railway?**

Pick DigitalOcean App Platform if Apps deployed from a Git repository or a container image where a flat per-container price is easier to reason about than usage metering — $5 a month buys 1 shared vCPU, 512 MiB and 50 GiB of bandwidth.
Pick Railway if Teams that want a plan fee which doubles as usage credit, and deploy services straight from a Dockerfile without managing servers. The $5 Hobby fee comes back as $5 of resource usage.