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Google Cloud Run vs Railway

SEPT 2026 audit

A 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.

Reviewed by Palash BagchiUpdated 37 criteria comparedSources last checked

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.

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

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

Visit Google Cloud Run documentationVisit Railway 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.

CriterionGoogle Cloud RunRailway
Pricing
Free tierYesYes
Kind of free offerFree tierFree tier
What the free plan includesPer 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.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 planNo 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.$5 / month (Hobby)
Pricing modelMetered 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.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 allowance1 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.$0.05 / GB
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 deploymentSupportedSupported
Docker deploymentSupportedSupported
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 — Serverless sleeps an idle service, but a slept service still holds a slot and is de-prioritised.
Autoscaling
Supported
Limited
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.
4 regions: California, Virginia, Amsterdam, Singapore
Uptime SLA
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.
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.
Compliance
SOC 2Covered 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, both listed under Compliance, with SOC 2 and SOC 3 reports among the documents. The reports are gated rather than public: the Trust Center asks visitors to request access and frames the whole page as starting a security review.
HIPAACloud Run is listed as a Covered Product under Google Cloud's HIPAA Business Associate Agreement.HIPAA is listed under Compliance and a HIPAA report is among the documents, behind the same access request as the rest. The Trust Center does not mention a business associate agreement.

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.

What the free plan includes

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.
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.
Sources (2) →
  • 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

  • Railway Plans ↗

    “Plan Price Free $0 / month Hobby $5 / month Pro $20 / month Enterprise Custom [...] Plan Policy Free / Trial 24 hours Hobby 72 hours”

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

Entry paid plan

Google 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.
Railway
$5 / month (Hobby)
Sources (2) →

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
A base subscription fee that goes towards usage, with the plan's own credit included; anything beyond the credit is billed as resource usage.
Sources (2) →
  • 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

  • Plans — Railway Docs ↗

    “We charge a base subscription price, which goes towards your resources and usage. [...] The subscription fee goes towards your usage-costs on the platform. Plan Price Free $0 / month Hobby $5 / month Pro $20 / month Enterprise Custom”

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

Egress over allowance

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.
Railway
$0.05 / GB
Sources (2) →
  • 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

  • Plans — Railway Docs ↗

    “CPU $20 / vCPU / month ($0.000463 / vCPU / minute) Network Egress $0.05 / GB ($0.000000047683716 / KB) Volume Storage $0.15 / GB / month”

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

Max request duration

Google Cloud Run

5 minutes by default, extendable to 60 minutes per request.

Railway

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) →

Persistent processes

Google Cloud Run
Limited — instance-based billing keeps CPU allocated
Railway
Supported
Sources (2) →
  • 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

  • Services — Railway Docs ↗

    “Types of services Persistent services Services that are always running. Examples include web applications, backend APIs, message queues, database services, etc.”

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

Edge network

Google Cloud Run
Limited — deploy per region, add a load balancer
Railway
Supported
Sources (2) →

Scales to zero

Google Cloud Run
Supported
Railway
Limited — Serverless sleeps an idle service, but a slept service still holds a slot and is de-prioritised.
Sources (2) →

Autoscaling

Google Cloud Run
Supported
Railway
Limited
Sources (2) →
  • 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 · Report a correction

  • 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 · Report a correction

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.

Railway

4 regions: California, Virginia, Amsterdam, Singapore

Sources (2) →
  • 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

  • Regions — Railway Docs ↗

    “Name Location Region Identifier US West Metal California, USA us-west2 US East Metal Virginia, USA us-east4-eqdc4a EU West Metal Amsterdam, Netherlands europe-west4-drams3a Southeast Asia Metal Singapore asia-southeast1-eqsg3a”

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

Uptime SLA

Google 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.

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.

Sources (2) →
  • Cloud Run Service Level Agreement ↗

    “Cloud regions (excluding Mexico and Stockholm) Covered Service Monthly Uptime Percentage Cloud Run Service (non-GPU) 99.95% Cloud Run Service GPU (zonal redundancy) 99.95% Cloud Run Service GPU (no zonal redundancy) 99.5%”

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

  • Railway Pricing ↗

    “single developer workspace community support 99.9% availability target 7-day log history [...] unlimited workspace seats included railway support 99.99% availability target 30-day log history”

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

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, both listed under Compliance, with SOC 2 and SOC 3 reports among the documents. The reports are gated rather than public: the Trust Center asks visitors to request access and frames the whole page as starting a security review.
Sources (2) →
  • 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 2026-09-13 · official site · Report a correction

  • Railway Trust Center ↗

    “Use this Trust Center to learn about our security posture and request access to our security documentation. Compliance SOC 2 Type 2 SOC 3 HIPAA GDPR EU-US DPF Swiss-US DPF Documents All Public Private Get access Bulk download REPORTS HIPAA Report REPORTS Pentest Report REPORTS SOC 2 Report REPORTS SOC 3 Report”

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

HIPAA

Google Cloud Run
Cloud Run is listed as a Covered Product under Google Cloud's HIPAA Business Associate Agreement.
Railway
HIPAA is listed under Compliance and a HIPAA report is among the documents, behind the same access request as the rest. The Trust Center does not mention a business associate agreement.
Sources (2) →
  • 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 · Report a correction

  • Railway Trust Center ↗

    “Compliance SOC 2 Type 2 SOC 3 HIPAA GDPR EU-US DPF Swiss-US DPF Documents All Public Private Get access Bulk download REPORTS HIPAA Report [...] COMPLIANCE HIPAA COMPLIANCE SOC 2 Type 2 COMPLIANCE SOC 3”

    Read 2026-09-14 · official site · 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.

When you exceed a capRailway: 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.
Memory (entry plan)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.
Sites or apps includedRailway: 50 projects and 50 services per project on Hobby; Pro raises both to 100 and Enterprise is unlimited.
Monthly visits capRailway: 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.
Streaming response limitRailway: 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 poolingRailway: Supported
ContainersGoogle Cloud Run: Supported
Scheduled jobsRailway: Supported
Persistent storageRailway: Supported
Managed databasesRailway: Limited
Audit logsRailway: Audit Logging is listed under Product Security, and Data Access Logging under Access Control. Neither is described further and no retention period is given.Google Cloud Run: not stated on its own page when read on 2026-09-21 — corrections welcome · every such claim about Google Cloud Run.
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 planRailway: Community support on Trial and on Hobby, the entry paid plan. Pro gets "Railway support"; Enterprise adds support SLOs.
ISO 27001Google Cloud Run: The Google Cloud Services ISMS holds an accredited ISO/IEC 27001 certification, audited by an independent third party.
GDPR / data residencyRailway: GDPR is listed under Compliance, alongside the EU-US and Swiss-US Data Privacy Frameworks. No region is named and no residency commitment is made anywhere on the page — the listing is about the regime, not about where data sits.Google Cloud Run: not stated on its own page when read on 2026-09-21 — corrections welcome · every such claim about Google Cloud Run.
PCI DSSGoogle Cloud Run: Cloud Run is listed among the individual Google Cloud products certified against PCI DSS via annual third-party audit.
Encryption at restRailway: Encryption-at-rest is listed under Data Security, beside Data Backups and Data Erasure. The Trust Center names the feature and gives no algorithm, scope or key-management detail; disk encryption appears separately under Endpoint Security, which is about staff devices rather than customer data.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.

Entry paid plan: Google Cloud Run or Railway?

Google 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.

Railway: $5 / month (Hobby)

Egress over allowance: Google Cloud Run or Railway?

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.

Railway: $0.05 / GB

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.

Provider pages

Google Cloud RunGoogle Cloud service that runs container images as request-driven services, scaling instances automatically and down to zero between requests.RailwayApplication platform that builds services from a repository or Dockerfile and bills plan fees that include usage credits.

Related comparisons

Azure Container Apps vs Google Cloud RunFly.io vs Google Cloud RunGoogle Cloud Run vs HerokuGoogle Cloud Run vs RenderHeroku vs RailwayRailway vs Fly.ioRender vs RailwayCloudflare Workers vs Cloudflare Pages

Comments

Every page here is sourced and dated.