Railway vs Fly.io
SEPT 2026 auditA 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
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.
Neither quite fits? Every other option, ranked by iScore: Railway alternatives · Fly.io alternatives
15 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.
Railway 0
Fly.io 0
At a glance.
| Criterion | Railway | Fly.io |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing | ||
| Free tier | Yes | No |
| Kind of free offer | Free tier | Free trial |
| What the free plan includes | 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. | Two hours of machine runtime or seven days of access, whichever runs out first, before a payment method is required. |
| Pricing model | A base subscription fee that goes towards usage, with the plan's own credit included; anything beyond the credit is billed as resource usage. | Usage-based, no compute plan tiers; billing is pro-rated for the time resources are provisioned. |
| Egress over allowance | $0.05 / GB | 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. |
| 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) |
| Limits | ||
| Memory (entry plan) | 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. | 256 MB on shared-cpu-1x, the cheapest Machine at $1.94/month in Ashburn (iad), the region the pricing table shows by default. |
| Execution | ||
| Streaming response limit | 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. | 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 | ||
| Git deployment | Supported | Limited |
| Docker deployment | Supported | Supported |
| Scheduled jobs | Supported | Limited |
| Infrastructure | ||
| Persistent processes | Supported | Supported — A stopped or suspended Machine still bills for its root filesystem at $0.15 per GB per month. |
| Persistent storage | Supported | Supported |
| Managed databases | Limited | Supported |
| Edge network | Supported | Limited |
| Scales to zero | Limited — Serverless sleeps an idle service, but a slept service still holds a slot and is de-prioritised. | Supported |
| Autoscaling | Limited | Limited — Two forms: autostop/autostart of existing Machines, and metrics-based autoscaling. |
| Regions | 4 regions: California, Virginia, Amsterdam, Singapore | 17 regions |
| Support | ||
| Support on entry paid plan | Community support on Trial and on Hobby, the entry paid plan. Pro gets "Railway support"; Enterprise adds support SLOs. | Community support is free. Paid support is a separate subscription on top of compute, not a plan tier: Standard $29/month, Premium $199/month. |
Where they differ.
Free tier
- Railway
- Yes
- Fly.io
- No
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Railway Plans ↗
“Plan Price Free $0 / month Hobby $5 / month Pro $20 / month Enterprise Custom”
Read 2026-09-13 · official docs · Report a correction
- 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
Kind of free offer
- Railway
- Free tier
- Fly.io
- Free trial
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Plans — Railway Docs ↗
“Railway offers four plans in addition to a Trial: Free For running small apps with $1 of free credit per month Hobby For indie hackers and developers to build and deploy personal projects”
Read 2026-09-13 · official pricing · Report a correction
- 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
What the free plan includes
- 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.
- Fly.io
- Two hours of machine runtime or seven days of access, whichever runs out first, before a payment method is required.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- 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
- 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
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.
- Fly.io
- Usage-based, no compute plan tiers; billing is pro-rated for the time resources are provisioned.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- 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
- 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
Egress over allowance
- Railway
- $0.05 / GB
- 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.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- 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
- 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
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 · Report a correction
- 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 · Report a correction
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.
- 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.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Plans — Railway Docs ↗
“Plan Replicas RAM CPU Ephemeral Storage Volume Storage Image Size [...] Hobby 6 48 GB 48 vCPU 100 GB 5 GB 100 GB [...] Note that these are maximum values and include replica multiplication. [...] RAM $10 / GB / month”
Read 2026-09-07 · official pricing · Report a correction
- Fly.io Resource Pricing - Fly.io ↗
“CPU(s) RAM Price/second Price/hour Price/month shared-cpu-1x 1 shared 256MB $0.00000075 $0.0027 $1.94 512MB $0.00000123 $0.0044 $3.19”
Read 2026-09-27 · official docs · Report a correction
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.
- 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 · Report a correction
- 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 · Report a correction
Git deployment
- Railway
- Supported
- Fly.io
- Limited
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Controlling GitHub Autodeploys — Railway Docs ↗
“Services linked to a GitHub repository automatically deploy when new commits are pushed to the connected branch.”
Read 2026-09-05 · official docs · Report a correction
- Continuous deployment with GitHub Actions — Fly Docs ↗
“push to the repository's master branch. If your repository uses a default branch other than master, such as main, then you should change that here. [...] jobs: deploy: name: Deploy app runs-on: ubuntu”
Read 2026-09-07 · official docs · Report a correction
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 · Report a correction
- 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 · Report a correction
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 · Report a correction
- Pricing - Fly.io Documentation ↗
“The price of running Fly.io Managed Postgres depends on your selected Managed Postgres Plan and the amount of storage your databases use.”
Read 2026-09-27 · official docs · Report a correction
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 · Report a correction
- 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 · Report a correction
Scales to zero
- Railway
- Limited — Serverless sleeps an idle service, but a slept service still holds a slot and is de-prioritised.
- Fly.io
- Supported
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- App Sleeping — Railway Docs ↗
“The first request made to a slept service wakes it. [...] For Railway to put a service to sleep, a service must not send outbound traffic for at least 5 minutes. [...] Slept services still consume a slot on Railway's infrastructure, enabling Serverless de-prioritizes your workload”
Read 2026-09-13 · official docs · Report a correction
- 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 · Report a correction
Regions
4 regions: California, Virginia, Amsterdam, Singapore
17 regions
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- 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
- 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
Support on entry paid plan
- Railway
- Community support on Trial and on Hobby, the entry paid plan. Pro gets "Railway support"; Enterprise adds support SLOs.
- Fly.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.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Railway Pricing ↗
“up to 5 GB storage single developer workspace Community support 99.9% availability target [...] unlimited workspace seats included Railway support 99.99% availability target”
Read 2026-09-14 · official pricing · Report a correction
- Fly.io Pricing ↗
“Support Community support is free and always has been. The paid plans add an easily nerd-sniped support team that feels like an extension of your own.”
Read 2026-09-14 · official pricing · Report a correction
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 — 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.
Questions this comparison answers.
Free tier: Railway or Fly.io?
Railway: Yes
Fly.io: No
Egress over allowance: Railway or Fly.io?
Railway: $0.05 / GB
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.
When you exceed a cap: Railway or Fly.io?
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)
Should I choose Railway or Fly.io?
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.
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