Google Cloud Run vs Railway
SEPT 2026 auditA comparison of Google Cloud Run and Railway built from values read directly from each provider's own documentation, with the source recorded against every figure.
The short answer
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
Choose 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.
Editorial · Palash Bagchi · approved
Consider something else if…
- Google Cloud Run: You need a process that stays running between requests, or a disk that survives a deploy.
- Railway: You need to run in a region outside California, Virginia, Amsterdam or Singapore.
9 sourced criteria separate them — see where, with sources, below.
Pick the criteria you care about. The chart counts how many of them lean toward each provider — the same read as scanning the bars below, just totalled for the ones you chose.
Google Cloud Run 0
Railway 0
At a glance.
| Criterion | Google Cloud Run | Railway |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing | ||
| Free tier | Yes | Yes |
| Pricing model | 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. | Plan fee that includes an equivalent usage credit |
| Limits | ||
| Max request duration | 5 minutes by default, extendable to 60 minutes per request. | 15 minutes while data keeps transferring; closed after 5 minutes with no data transferred. Websocket connections are exempt and can stay open indefinitely. |
| Deployment | ||
| Git deployment | Supported | Supported |
| Docker deployment | Supported | Supported |
| Infrastructure | ||
| Persistent processes | Limited — instance-based billing keeps CPU allocated | Supported |
| Edge network | Limited — deploy per region, add a load balancer | Supported |
| Scales to zero | Supported | Limited |
| Autoscaling | Supported | Limited |
| Regions | 41 regions, counted from Cloud Run's own locations list — Google publishes the list rather than a total. They are split into Tier 1 and Tier 2 pricing, so the region chosen changes the bill as well as the latency. | 4 regions: California, Virginia, Amsterdam, Singapore |
| Compliance | ||
| SOC 2 | Covered under Google Cloud's core SOC 2 Type II reports, issued quarterly for Google Cloud and Google Workspace products generally. | SOC 2 Type 2 and SOC 3 reports available via Railway's Trust Center. |
| HIPAA | Cloud Run is listed as a Covered Product under Google Cloud's HIPAA Business Associate Agreement. | Listed under Compliance certifications, with a dedicated report available. |
Where they differ.
Pricing model
- 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.
- Railway
- Plan fee that includes an equivalent usage credit
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- 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
- Railway plans ↗
“The Hobby plan includes $5 of resource usage per month. The Pro plan includes $20 of resource usage per month.”
Read 2026-09-05 · official docs
Max request duration
5 minutes by default, extendable to 60 minutes per request.
15 minutes while data keeps transferring; closed after 5 minutes with no data transferred. Websocket connections are exempt and can stay open indefinitely.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Configure request timeout for services — Google Cloud Documentation ↗
“The timeout is set by default to 5 minutes (300 seconds) and can be extended up to 60 minutes (3600 seconds).”
Read 2026-09-09 · official docs
- Specs & Limits — Railway Docs ↗
“HTTP requests can run for up to 15 minutes if data keeps transferring (for example, keep-alive heartbeats), and are otherwise closed after 5 minutes with no data transferred. [...] Websocket connections are exempt from these duration and inactivity limits, and can stay open indefinitely, even while idle.”
Read 2026-09-05 · official docs
Persistent processes
- Google Cloud Run
- Limited — instance-based billing keeps CPU allocated
- Railway
- Supported
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- 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
- Services — Railway Docs ↗
“Persistent services: Services that are always running. Examples include web applications, backend APIs, message queues, database services, etc.”
Read 2026-09-05 · official docs
Edge network
- Google Cloud Run
- Limited — deploy per region, add a load balancer
- Railway
- Supported
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Serve traffic from multiple regions — Cloud Run — Google Cloud Documentation ↗
“Because Cloud Run services deploy into individual regions, you must deploy your service to multiple regions and then configure global load balancing for the service. You can automate cross-regional failover using Cloud Run service health.”
Read 2026-09-09 · official docs
- Edge Networking — Railway Docs ↗
“Railway uses a globally distributed edge network to route traffic to your deployments. [...] Edge POPs are the entry points where user traffic first reaches Railway. Each request is terminated at the nearest POP and tagged with that POP's ID in the X-Railway-Edge header.”
Read 2026-09-05 · official docs
Scales to zero
- Google Cloud Run
- Supported
- Railway
- Limited
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- About instance autoscaling in Cloud Run services — Google Cloud Documentation ↗
“When a revision does not receive any traffic, by default, it is scaled to zero instances.”
Read 2026-09-09 · official docs
- Serverless (App Sleeping) | Railway Docs ↗
“Serverless allows you to increase the efficiency of resource utilization on Railway and may reduce the usage cost of a service, by ensuring it is running only when necessary. [...] When Serverless is enabled for a service, Railway automatically detects inactivity based on outbound traffic. [...] Inactivity is sampled on an interval rather than measured continuously, so in practice a service sleeps somewhere between 5 and 10 minutes after its last outbound traffic. [...] Slept services still consume a slot on Railway's infrastructure.”
Read 2026-09-05 · official docs
Autoscaling
- Google Cloud Run
- Supported
- Railway
- Limited
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- About instance autoscaling in Cloud Run services — Google Cloud Documentation ↗
“By default, each Cloud Run revision is automatically scaled to the number of instances needed to handle incoming requests, events, or CPU utilization. [...] Cloud Run adjusts instance counts to keep average CPU and concurrency within target thresholds.”
Read 2026-09-09 · official docs
- Scaling | Railway Docs ↗
“Scaling your applications in Railway is made easy with configurable options for horizontal scaling as well as vertical autoscaling out-of-the-box. [...] Scale horizontally by manually increasing the number of replicas for a service in the service settings.”
Read 2026-09-05 · official docs
Regions
41 regions, counted from Cloud Run's own locations list — Google publishes the list rather than a total. They are split into Tier 1 and Tier 2 pricing, so the region chosen changes the bill as well as the latency.
4 regions: California, Virginia, Amsterdam, Singapore
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Cloud Run locations — Google Cloud Documentation ↗
“Each Cloud Run resource resides in a region. [...] Subject to Tier 1 pricing asia-east1 (Taiwan) asia-northeast1 (Tokyo) asia-northeast2 (Osaka) asia-south1 (Mumbai, India) asia-southeast1 [...] northamerica-northeast2 (Toronto) southamerica-east1 (Sao Paulo, Brazil) southamerica-west1 (Santiago, Chile) us-west2 (Los Angeles) us-west3 (Salt Lake City) us-west4 (Las Vegas)”
Read 2026-09-09 · official docs
- Railway regions ↗
“US West Metal — California, USA; US East Metal — Virginia, USA; EU West Metal — Amsterdam, Netherlands; Southeast Asia Metal — Singapore”
Read 2026-09-05 · official docs
SOC 2
- Google Cloud Run
- Covered under Google Cloud's core SOC 2 Type II reports, issued quarterly for Google Cloud and Google Workspace products generally.
- Railway
- SOC 2 Type 2 and SOC 3 reports available via Railway's Trust Center.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- SOC 2: compliance — Google Cloud ↗
“Google Cloud regularly undergoes third-party audits for our products, systems, and infrastructure related to this standard. [...] The core Google Cloud and Google Workspace SOC 2 Type II reports are issued quarterly.”
Read 2026-09-12 · official site
- Railway Trust Center ↗
“Railway offers both SOC 2 Type 2 and SOC 3 certifications, with reports available for download.”
Read 2026-09-12 · official site
HIPAA
- Google Cloud Run
- Cloud Run is listed as a Covered Product under Google Cloud's HIPAA Business Associate Agreement.
- Railway
- Listed under Compliance certifications, with a dedicated report available.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- HIPAA Compliance on Google Cloud ↗
“Covered Products [...] The Google Cloud BAA covers Google Cloud's entire infrastructure [...] and the following products: [...] Cloud Run [...]”
Read 2026-09-12 · official site
- Railway Trust Center ↗
“HIPAA listed under Compliance certifications with a dedicated report available.”
Read 2026-09-12 · official site
When these numbers change, hear about it. Sources are re-checked monthly; a repricing goes out as a short note.
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.
Questions this comparison answers.
Should I choose Google Cloud Run or Railway?
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.
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.