Railway vs Fly.io
A comparison of Railway and Fly.io built from values read directly from each provider's own documentation, with the source recorded against every figure.
The short answer
- 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.
- 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.
9 sourced criteria separate them:
- Pricing model
- Railway: Plan fee that includes an equivalent usage credit
- Fly.io: Usage-based, no compute plan tiers
- Egress over allowance
- Railway: $0.05 / GB
- Fly.io: $0.02 per GB (North America / Europe); $0.04 per GB (Asia Pacific / Oceania / South America); $0.12 per GB (Africa / India)
- 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
- Fly.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)
- Streaming response limit
- Railway: Platform-wide: a stream that keeps transferring data may run up to 15 minutes; a connection with no data transferred is closed after 5 minutes. Idle HTTP/1.1 connections are closed after 60 seconds between requests. WebSocket connections are exempt.
- Fly.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.
- Scheduled jobs
- Railway: Supported
- Fly.io: Limited
- Managed databases
- Railway: Limited
- Fly.io: Supported
- Edge network
- Railway: Supported
- Fly.io: Limited
- Scales to zero
- Railway: Limited
- Fly.io: Supported
- Regions
- Railway: 4 regions: California, Virginia, Amsterdam, Singapore
- Fly.io: 18 regions
At a glance.
| Criterion | Railway | Fly.io |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing | ||
| Pricing model | Plan fee that includes an equivalent usage credit | Usage-based, no compute plan tiers |
| Egress over allowance | $0.05 / GB | $0.02 per GB (North America / Europe); $0.04 per GB (Asia Pacific / Oceania / South America); $0.12 per GB (Africa / India) |
| When you exceed a cap | 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 | 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) |
| Execution | ||
| Streaming response limit | Platform-wide: a stream that keeps transferring data may run up to 15 minutes; a connection with no data transferred is closed after 5 minutes. Idle HTTP/1.1 connections are closed after 60 seconds between requests. WebSocket connections are exempt. | 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 pooling | Supported | Supported |
| Deployment | ||
| Docker deployment | Supported | Supported |
| Scheduled jobs | Supported | Limited |
| Infrastructure | ||
| Persistent storage | Supported | Supported |
| Managed databases | Limited | Supported |
| Edge network | Supported | Limited |
| Scales to zero | Limited | Supported |
| Autoscaling | Limited | Limited |
| Regions | 4 regions: California, Virginia, Amsterdam, Singapore | 18 regions |
Where they differ.
Pricing model
- Railway
- Plan fee that includes an equivalent usage credit
- Fly.io
- Usage-based, no compute plan tiers
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- 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
- Fly.io pricing ↗
“Plans get complicated, so we just charge based on usage. Billing is based on the resources provisioned for your apps, pro-rated for the time they are provisioned.”
Read 2026-09-05 · official docs
Egress over allowance
- Railway
- $0.05 / GB
- Fly.io
- $0.02 per GB (North America / Europe); $0.04 per GB (Asia Pacific / Oceania / South America); $0.12 per GB (Africa / India)
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Plans | Railway Docs ↗
“Network Egress | $0.05 / GB ($0.000000047683716 / KB)”
Read 2026-09-05 · official pricing
- Pricing · Fly Docs ↗
“We bill for data leaving your app destined for the public internet or for apps or Machines in other regions — Egress to Internet: North America / Europe $0.02 per GB; Asia Pacific / Oceania / South America $0.04 per GB; Africa / India $0.12 per GB.”
Read 2026-09-05 · official pricing
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
- Fly.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)
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Pricing Plans | Railway Docs ↗
“If your total resource usage exceeds $5 in any given billing period, you will be charged the delta”
Read 2026-09-05 · official docs
- Fly.io Resource Pricing · Fly Docs ↗
“Organizations may be subject to automated scaling limits to prevent abuse or to help with capacity planning. Email the address in the error message if you run into such a limit and it's getting in your way.”
Read 2026-09-05 · official pricing
Streaming response limit
- Railway
- Platform-wide: a stream that keeps transferring data may run up to 15 minutes; a connection with no data transferred is closed after 5 minutes. Idle HTTP/1.1 connections are closed after 60 seconds between requests. WebSocket connections are exempt.
- Fly.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.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Specs & Limits ↗
“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
- Content Encoding — Fly Docs ↗
“The proxy buffers responses before compressing them. That can break HTML streaming—e.g., progressive server-side rendering. To avoid buffering, disable compression by setting Content-Encoding: none for those responses”
Read 2026-09-05 · official docs
Scheduled jobs
- Railway
- Supported
- Fly.io
- Limited
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Cron Jobs | Railway Docs ↗
“Cron Jobs allow you to start a service based on a crontab expression. [...] The shortest time between successive executions of a cron job cannot be less than 5 minutes.”
Read 2026-09-05 · official docs
- fly machine run · Fly Docs ↗
“Use the --schedule flag to set the Machine's config.schedule property, which starts the Machine on a fuzzy hourly, daily, weekly, or monthly cycle.”
Read 2026-09-05 · official docs
Managed databases
- Railway
- Limited
- Fly.io
- Supported
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Databases — Railway Docs ↗
“Railway enables you to deploy and manage databases alongside your applications. [...] The fastest way to deploy a database is through Railway's database templates [...] These templates are maintained by Railway and come pre-configured with sensible defaults.”
Read 2026-09-05 · official docs
- Fly.io pricing ↗
“The price of running Fly.io Managed Postgres depends on your selected Managed Postgres Plan and the amount of storage your Postgres cluster has.”
Read 2026-09-05 · official docs
Edge network
- Railway
- Supported
- Fly.io
- Limited
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- 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
- The Fly.io Architecture — Fly Docs ↗
“We broadcast and accept traffic from ranges of IP addresses (both IPv4 and IPv6) in all our datacenters. When we receive a connection on one of those IPs, we match it back to an active customer application, and then proxy the TCP connection to the closest available microVM.”
Read 2026-09-05 · official docs
Scales to zero
- Railway
- Limited
- Fly.io
- Supported
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- 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
- Automatically stop and start Machines · Fly Docs ↗
“Use autostop/autostart to automatically start and stop or suspend existing Machines based on incoming requests. [...] you don't pay for their CPU and RAM when they're in a stopped or suspended state.”
Read 2026-09-05 · official docs
Regions
- Railway
- 4 regions: California, Virginia, Amsterdam, Singapore
- Fly.io
- 18 regions
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- 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
- Fly.io regions ↗
“You can host your apps in any of the following regions — including ams (Amsterdam, Netherlands), nrt (Tokyo, Japan) and syd (Sydney, Australia).”
Read 2026-09-05 · official docs
Which should you choose?
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
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
Consider something else if…
- Railway: You need to run in a region outside California, Virginia, Amsterdam or Singapore.
- Fly.io: You want a predictable flat bill rather than charges that track the resources provisioned for each app.
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.