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Fly.io vs Google Cloud Run

SEPT 2026 audit

A comparison of Fly.io and Google Cloud Run built from values read directly from each provider's own documentation, with the source recorded against every figure.

Reviewed by Palash BagchiUpdated 37 criteria comparedSources last checked

The short answer

Choose Fly.io if…

Workloads that ship as Docker images and need placement in particular regions. Billing is purely usage-based with no plan tiers, which suits spiky or region-pinned traffic better than a flat monthly fee.

Editorial · Palash Bagchi · approved

Choose Google Cloud Run if…

A container you already build, that should cost nothing when nobody is using it. Scales to zero by default and back up on request volume, with a 60-minute ceiling per request that most request-driven platforms do not offer.

Editorial · Palash Bagchi · approved

Consider something else if…

  • Fly.io: You want a predictable flat bill rather than charges that track the resources provisioned for each app.
  • Google Cloud Run: You need a process that stays running between requests, or a disk that survives a deploy.

Neither quite fits? Every other option, ranked by iScore: Fly.io alternatives · Google Cloud Run alternatives

9 sourced criteria separate them — see where, with sources, below.

Visit Fly.io documentationVisit Google Cloud Run documentation

No affiliate links, sponsored placements or paid rankings appear on this site. Ordering follows the sourced data and the stated criteria.

01.

At a glance.

CriterionFly.ioGoogle Cloud Run
Pricing
Free tier
No
Yes
Kind of free offerFree trialFree tier
What the free plan includesTwo hours of machine runtime or seven days of access, whichever runs out first, before a payment method is required.Per month, for services on the default request-based billing, in us-central1: 180,000 vCPU-seconds, 360,000 GiB-seconds of memory and 2 million requests. Instance-based billing, jobs and worker pools each publish a different allowance on the same page.
Pricing modelUsage-based, no compute plan tiers; billing is pro-rated for the time resources are provisioned.Metered by resource, billed in 100 ms increments, with no monthly minimum. Two billing settings change what is counted: request-based charges CPU only while a request is being processed, instance-based charges for the whole instance lifecycle. Prices vary by region — the location list is split into Tier 1 and Tier 2 pricing — and the free tier is applied as a spending-based discount at Tier 1 rates.
Egress over allowanceEgress to the public internet is $0.02/GB in North America and Europe, $0.04/GB in Asia Pacific, Oceania and South America, and $0.12/GB in Africa and India.1 GiB of data transfer within North America free per month, after which Google Cloud networking rates apply. Transfer into a VPC network is billed at Virtual Private Cloud rates instead.
Deployment
Git deployment
Limited
Supported
Docker deploymentSupportedSupported
Infrastructure
Persistent processes
Supported — A stopped or suspended Machine still bills for its root filesystem at $0.15 per GB per month.
Limited — instance-based billing keeps CPU allocated
Edge networkLimitedLimited — deploy per region, add a load balancer
Scales to zeroSupportedSupported
Autoscaling
Limited — Two forms: autostop/autostart of existing Machines, and metrics-based autoscaling.
Supported
Regions
17 regions
43 regions, counted from Cloud Run's own locations list — Google publishes the list rather than a total. 20 are Tier 1 and 23 Tier 2, so the region chosen changes the bill as well as the latency.

Only criteria both providers publish appear here; a tinted cell marks a real difference. Criteria only one of them documents are listed below, and an absence there means we found no source — not that the feature is missing. How we source this.

The small bar above a value is inetGeek's own lean toward that side — computed from the same facts shown, never a number the provider published. See the picker below "The short answer" to weigh only the criteria you care about.

02.

Where they differ.

Free tier

Fly.io
No
Google Cloud Run
Yes
Sources (2) →
  • Fly.io free trial ↗

    “A free trial on Fly.io includes 2 hours of machine runtime or 7 days of access, whichever comes first.”

    Read 2026-09-13 · official docs · Report a correction

  • Cloud Run pricing — Google Cloud ↗

    “Services with instance-based billing Free tier (based on us-central1 pricing): CPU - First 240,000 vCPU-seconds free per month RAM - First 450,000 GiB-seconds free per month [...] The free tier usage is aggregated across projects by billing account and resets every month; you are billed only for usage past the free tier.”

    Read 2026-09-09 · official pricing · Report a correction

Kind of free offer

Fly.io
Free trial
Google Cloud Run
Free tier
Sources (2) →
  • Fly.io free trial ↗

    “A free trial on Fly.io includes 2 hours of machine runtime or 7 days of access, whichever comes first.”

    Read 2026-09-13 · official docs · Report a correction

  • Cloud Run pricing — Google Cloud ↗

    “Services with instance-based billing Free tier (based on us-central1 pricing): CPU - First 240,000 vCPU-seconds free per month RAM - First 450,000 GiB-seconds free per month [...] The free tier usage is aggregated across projects by billing account and resets every month; you are billed only for usage past the free tier.”

    Read 2026-09-09 · official pricing · Report a correction

What the free plan includes

Fly.io
Two hours of machine runtime or seven days of access, whichever runs out first, before a payment method is required.
Google Cloud Run
Per month, for services on the default request-based billing, in us-central1: 180,000 vCPU-seconds, 360,000 GiB-seconds of memory and 2 million requests. Instance-based billing, jobs and worker pools each publish a different allowance on the same page.
Sources (2) →
  • Fly.io free trial ↗

    “This page explains how our free trial works and what resources you can use before you need to add a payment method. [...] A free trial on Fly.io includes 2 hours of machine runtime or 7 days of access, whichever comes first.”

    Read 2026-09-13 · official docs · Report a correction

  • Cloud Run pricing | Google Cloud ↗

    “Services (Requests-based billing) Services with request-based billing during billed instance time Free tier (based on us-central1 active pricing): CPU - First 180,000 vCPU-seconds free per month RAM - First 360,000 GiB-seconds free per month Requests - 2 million requests free per month”

    Read 2026-09-16 · official pricing · Report a correction

Pricing model

Fly.io
Usage-based, no compute plan tiers; billing is pro-rated for the time resources are provisioned.
Google Cloud Run
Metered by resource, billed in 100 ms increments, with no monthly minimum. Two billing settings change what is counted: request-based charges CPU only while a request is being processed, instance-based charges for the whole instance lifecycle. Prices vary by region — the location list is split into Tier 1 and Tier 2 pricing — and the free tier is applied as a spending-based discount at Tier 1 rates.
Sources (2) →
  • Pricing — Fly.io Docs ↗

    “Plans get complicated, so we just charge based on usage. Pick and choose which pieces you need for your application; that's all you'll see on your invoice.”

    Read 2026-09-14 · official docs · Report a correction

  • Cloud Run pricing — Google Cloud ↗

    “Cloud Run charges you only for the resources you use, rounded up to the nearest 100 millisecond. Your total Cloud Run bill will be the sum of the resource usage in the pricing table after the free tier is applied. [...] Cloud Run pricing depends on the selected region. Pricing for Cloud Run services also depends on the billing configuration. [...] The free tier is applied as a spending based discount using Tier 1 pricing.”

    Read 2026-09-09 · official pricing · Report a correction

Egress over allowance

Fly.io
Egress to the public internet is $0.02/GB in North America and Europe, $0.04/GB in Asia Pacific, Oceania and South America, and $0.12/GB in Africa and India.
Google Cloud Run
1 GiB of data transfer within North America free per month, after which Google Cloud networking rates apply. Transfer into a VPC network is billed at Virtual Private Cloud rates instead.
Sources (2) →
  • Fly.io pricing ↗

    “public internet cost Private network cross-region transfer cost - North America - Europe $0.02 per GB $0.006 per GB - Asia Pacific - Oceania - South America $0.04 per GB $0.015 per GB - Africa - India $0.12 per GB $0.050 per GB”

    Read 2026-09-13 · official docs · Report a correction

  • Cloud Run pricing | Google Cloud ↗

    “Cloud networking pricing with a free tier of 1GiB free data transfer within North America per month. Data transfer to Virtual Private Cloud networks is billed as Data transfer from a VM and charged at Virtual Private Cloud data transfer rates .”

    Read 2026-09-16 · official pricing · Report a correction

Git deployment

Fly.io
Limited
Google Cloud Run
Supported
Sources (2) →

Persistent processes

Fly.io
Supported — A stopped or suspended Machine still bills for its root filesystem at $0.15 per GB per month.
Google Cloud Run
Limited — instance-based billing keeps CPU allocated
Sources (2) →
  • Billing - Fly.io Documentation ↗

    “If you provision Machines and leave them running all month, we'll charge you a predictable amount for that Machine. [...] Stopped and suspended Machines are billed based on their root file system (rootfs) usage per second (the time they spend in the stopped or suspended state) by $0.15 per GB per month.”

    Read 2026-09-27 · official docs · Report a correction

  • Billing settings for Cloud Run services — Google Cloud Documentation ↗

    “With request-based billing, CPU is only allocated during request processing. With instance-based billing, CPU is allocated for the entire container instance lifecycle. [...] Instance-based billing can be useful for running short-lived background tasks and other asynchronous processing tasks. This setting was previously called CPU always allocated.”

    Read 2026-09-09 · official docs · Report a correction

Autoscaling

Fly.io
Limited — Two forms: autostop/autostart of existing Machines, and metrics-based autoscaling.
Google Cloud Run
Supported
Sources (2) →

Regions

Fly.io

17 regions

Google Cloud Run

43 regions, counted from Cloud Run's own locations list — Google publishes the list rather than a total. 20 are Tier 1 and 23 Tier 2, so the region chosen changes the bill as well as the latency.

Sources (2) →
  • Regions - Fly.io Documentation ↗

    “You can host your apps in any of the following regions. Region ID Region Location Gateway MPG ams Amsterdam, Netherlands ✓ ✓ arn Stockholm, Sweden ✓ cdg Paris, France ✓ dfw Dallas, Texas (US) ✓ ✓ ewr Secaucus, NJ (US) ✓ fra Frankfurt, Germany ✓ ✓ gru Sao Paulo, Brazil ✓ iad Ashburn, Virginia (US) ✓ ✓ jnb Johannesburg, South Africa lax Los Angeles, California (US) ✓ ✓ lhr London, United Kingdom ✓ ✓ nrt Tokyo, Japan ✓ ✓ ord Chicago, Illinois (US) ✓ ✓ sin Singapore, Singapore ✓ ✓ sjc San Jose, California (US) ✓ ✓ syd Sydney, Australia ✓ ✓ yyz Toronto, Canada ✓ ✓”

    Read 2026-09-27 · official docs · Report a correction

  • Cloud Run locations ↗

    “Each Cloud Run resource resides in a region. [...] Customer data associated with the Cloud Run resource is stored in the selected region. [...] Subject to Tier 1 pricing [...] Subject to Tier 2 pricing”

    Read 2026-09-13 · official docs · Report a correction

When these numbers change, hear about it. Sources are re-checked monthly; a repricing goes out as a short note.

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03.

Documented by only one.

These criteria are published by one provider and not the other. An absence here means we have not found a source, not that the feature is missing — except where we say we read the other provider's own page on a given date and it does not state it. Those rows lean, and the provider can correct them with a link.

Credit card to startFly.io: No — Apps stop when the trial's 2 machine-hours or 7 days run out, whichever comes first, until a card is added.
When the free offer endsFly.io: 7 days, or when the trial's included resources run out — whichever comes first.
Entry paid planGoogle Cloud Run: No plan fee and no minimum commitment. Cloud Run bills per vCPU-second, GiB-second and request once the monthly free allowance is used, so there is no entry price to compare, only a rate card. Recorded without a magnitude for that reason.
When you exceed a capFly.io: No plan cap to exceed — Fly bills per second for provisioned resources. The only documented enforcement is unspecified automated scaling limits, which surface as an error message (platform-wide, all plans)
Memory (entry plan)Fly.io: 256 MB on shared-cpu-1x, the cheapest Machine at $1.94/month in Ashburn (iad), the region the pricing table shows by default.
File, inode or volume limitFly.io: 8 GB rootfs (deployed image) limit per Machine, platform-wide on all plans; exceeding it fails the image push at deploy time
Max request durationGoogle Cloud Run: 5 minutes by default, extendable to 60 minutes per request.
CPU time limitFly.io: Platform-wide, per Machine size: shared vCPUs get a 5ms CPU quota per 80ms period (6.25%); performance vCPUs get the full 80ms. Quotas are shared across a Machine's vCPUs, and tasks are throttled for the rest of the period once the quota is reached.
Streaming response limitFly.io: No duration or size ceiling documented. Streaming works, but Fly Proxy buffers responses before compressing them, so progressive server-side rendering needs Content-Encoding: none set on those responses.
Managed connection poolingFly.io: Supported
ContainersGoogle Cloud Run: Supported
Scheduled jobsFly.io: Limited
Persistent storageFly.io: Supported
Managed databasesFly.io: Supported
Uptime SLAGoogle Cloud Run: 99.95% for a non-GPU service and for GPU services with zonal redundancy; 99.5% for GPU services without it. Published as an SLO, outside Mexico and Stockholm.
CPU, per vCPU-secondGoogle Cloud Run: $0.000024 per vCPU-second of ACTIVE time under request-based billing, in the us-central1 pricing tier. Idle time on a warm minimum instance is $0.0000025. Instance-based billing is a separate table on the same page at $0.000018, and committed-use discounts take the active rate to $0.00001992.
Memory, per GiB-secondGoogle Cloud Run: $0.0000025 per GiB-second of active time under request-based billing, in the us-central1 pricing tier — the same rate Cloud Run charges for idle time on a warm instance. Committed-use discounts take it to $0.000002075.
Requests, per millionGoogle Cloud Run: $0.40 per million requests under request-based billing. Committed-use discounts take it to $0.332. Instance-based billing does not meter requests at all, which is the trade for paying by the instance-second instead.
Support on entry paid planFly.io: Community support is free. Paid support is a separate subscription on top of compute, not a plan tier: Standard $29/month, Premium $199/month.
Response time commitmentFly.io: 36-hour first response on Standard, the cheapest paid support plan at $29/month.
SOC 2Google Cloud Run: Covered under Google Cloud's core SOC 2 Type II reports, issued quarterly for Google Cloud and Google Workspace products generally.Fly.io: not stated on its own page when read on 2026-09-21 — corrections welcome · every such claim about Fly.io.
ISO 27001Google Cloud Run: The Google Cloud Services ISMS holds an accredited ISO/IEC 27001 certification, audited by an independent third party.Fly.io: not stated on its own page when read on 2026-09-21 — corrections welcome · every such claim about Fly.io.
HIPAAGoogle Cloud Run: Cloud Run is listed as a Covered Product under Google Cloud's HIPAA Business Associate Agreement.Fly.io: not stated on its own page when read on 2026-09-21 — corrections welcome · every such claim about Fly.io.
PCI DSSGoogle Cloud Run: Cloud Run is listed among the individual Google Cloud products certified against PCI DSS via annual third-party audit.Fly.io: not stated on its own page when read on 2026-09-21 — corrections welcome · every such claim about Fly.io.
Private networking / VPCFly.io: No Terraform, no VPC configurations, no IAM: apps talk directly to each other on private networks with zero configuration .Google Cloud Run: not stated on its own page when read on 2026-09-21 — corrections welcome · every such claim about Google Cloud Run.
04.

Questions this comparison answers.

Free tier: Fly.io or Google Cloud Run?

Fly.io: No

Google Cloud Run: Yes

Egress over allowance: Fly.io or Google Cloud Run?

Fly.io: Egress to the public internet is $0.02/GB in North America and Europe, $0.04/GB in Asia Pacific, Oceania and South America, and $0.12/GB in Africa and India.

Google Cloud Run: 1 GiB of data transfer within North America free per month, after which Google Cloud networking rates apply. Transfer into a VPC network is billed at Virtual Private Cloud rates instead.

Should I choose Fly.io or Google Cloud Run?

Pick Fly.io if Workloads that ship as Docker images and need placement in particular regions. Billing is purely usage-based with no plan tiers, which suits spiky or region-pinned traffic better than a flat monthly fee.

Pick Google Cloud Run if A container you already build, that should cost nothing when nobody is using it. Scales to zero by default and back up on request volume, with a 60-minute ceiling per request that most request-driven platforms do not offer.

Provider pages

Fly.ioRuns Docker images as lightweight VMs in chosen regions, billed on provisioned resources rather than plan tiers.Google Cloud RunGoogle Cloud service that runs container images as request-driven services, scaling instances automatically and down to zero between requests.

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Comments

Every page here is sourced and dated.