# Render vs Railway

Canonical: https://inetgeek.com/compare/render-vs-railway/

Every value below is read from Render's and Railway's own documentation. See https://inetgeek.com/methodology/ for how.

## At a glance

| Criterion | Render | Railway |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Free tier | Yes | Yes |
| Kind of free offer | Free tier | Free tier |
| What the free plan includes | Free instances of web services, Render Postgres and Key Value, plus static sites at no charge. Free instances carry documented limitations. | 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. |
| Pricing model | The Hobby plan does not have a monthly fee, so you only pay for usage. | A base subscription fee that goes towards usage, with the plan's own credit included; anything beyond the credit is billed as resource usage. |
| When you exceed a cap | Pipeline minutes: overage is auto-purchased, but with no payment method or once the monthly spend limit is reached Render stops running pipeline tasks, builds included. | 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) | No persistent disk is included on any instance type, including the entry `0.5c-512mb` plan; services run on an ephemeral filesystem unless a persistent disk is attached separately | 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) | 512 MB RAM (with 0.5 CPU) on the 0.5c-512mb instance type, the cheapest paid web service compute 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. |
| Sites or apps included | 25 total services on the Hobby workspace plan (Render's entry workspace tier, compute billed separately); also limited to a single team member | 50 projects and 50 services per project on Hobby; Pro raises both to 100 and Enterprise is unlimited. |
| Monthly visits cap | No request-count cap is published; traffic is capped by outbound bandwidth, 5 GB/month included on Hobby and 25 GB on Pro. | 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. |
| Managed connection pooling | Supported | Supported |
| Git deployment | Supported | Supported |
| Docker deployment | Supported | Supported |
| Scheduled jobs | Supported | Supported |
| Persistent processes | Supported | Supported |
| Persistent storage | Supported | Supported |
| Managed databases | Supported | Limited |
| Edge network | Supported | Supported |
| Scales to zero | Supported | Limited — Serverless sleeps an idle service, but a slept service still holds a slot and is de-prioritised. |
| Autoscaling | Limited — Requires a Pro workspace plan or higher; scales on CPU or memory utilisation targets. | Limited |
| Regions | Oregon, USA; Ohio, USA; Virginia, USA; Frankfurt, Germany; Singapore | 4 regions: California, Virginia, Amsterdam, Singapore |
| Uptime SLA | Enterprise only, and custom-priced. Hobby, Professional and Organization publish no uptime SLA, and no percentage is given for the Enterprise one. | 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. |
| Audit logs | Built-in audit logging and monitoring for platform events. | Audit Logging is listed under Product Security, and Data Access Logging under Access Control. Neither is described further and no retention period is given. |
| Support on entry paid plan | Chat support, from the free Hobby plan upward. Professional ($25/month plus compute) adds seats, bandwidth and features but no separate support tier. | Community support on Trial and on Hobby, the entry paid plan. Pro gets "Railway support"; Enterprise adds support SLOs. |
| HIPAA | Meet SOC 2 Type 2, HIPAA, ISO 27001, and GDPR requirements without overhead. | 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. |
| GDPR / data residency | Meet SOC 2 Type 2, HIPAA, ISO 27001, and GDPR requirements without overhead. | 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. |

## Where they differ

### What the free plan includes

- Render: Free instances of web services, Render Postgres and Key Value, plus static sites at no charge. Free instances carry documented limitations. ([source](https://render.com/docs/free))
- 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. ([source](https://docs.railway.com/reference/pricing/plans))
- Lean: none. No documented basis to lean either way on this criterion.

### Pricing model

- Render: The Hobby plan does not have a monthly fee, so you only pay for usage. ([source](https://render.com/docs/new-workspace-plans))
- 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. ([source](https://docs.railway.com/reference/pricing/plans))
- Lean: none. No documented basis to lean either way on this criterion.

### When you exceed a cap

- Render: Pipeline minutes: overage is auto-purchased, but with no payment method or once the monthly spend limit is reached Render stops running pipeline tasks, builds included. ([source](https://render.com/docs/build-pipeline))
- 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 ([source](https://docs.railway.com/pricing/plans))
- Lean: none. No documented basis to lean either way on this criterion.

### Storage (entry plan)

- Render: No persistent disk is included on any instance type, including the entry `0.5c-512mb` plan; services run on an ephemeral filesystem unless a persistent disk is attached separately ([source](https://render.com/docs/disks))
- 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. ([source](https://railway.com/pricing))
- Lean: none. No documented basis to lean either way on this criterion.

### Memory (entry plan)

- Render: 512 MB RAM (with 0.5 CPU) on the 0.5c-512mb instance type, the cheapest paid web service compute plan. ([source](https://render.com/docs/compute-plans))
- 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. ([source](https://docs.railway.com/reference/pricing/plans))
- Lean: none. No documented basis to lean either way on this criterion.

### Sites or apps included

- Render: 25 total services on the Hobby workspace plan (Render's entry workspace tier, compute billed separately); also limited to a single team member ([source](https://render.com/docs/new-workspace-plans))
- Railway: 50 projects and 50 services per project on Hobby; Pro raises both to 100 and Enterprise is unlimited. ([source](https://railway.com/pricing))
- Lean: 33% Render / 67% Railway — proportional to the documented capacity. inetGeek's own reading, computed from the two values above by the rules at https://inetgeek.com/methodology/, not a provider claim.

### Monthly visits cap

- Render: No request-count cap is published; traffic is capped by outbound bandwidth, 5 GB/month included on Hobby and 25 GB on Pro. ([source](https://render.com/docs/outbound-bandwidth))
- Railway: 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. ([source](https://docs.railway.com/networking/public-networking/specs-and-limits))
- Lean: none. No documented basis to lean either way on this criterion.

### Managed databases

- Render: Supported ([source](https://render.com/docs/postgresql))
- Railway: Limited ([source](https://docs.railway.com/databases))
- Lean: 64% Render / 36% Railway — documented support level. inetGeek's own reading, computed from the two values above by the rules at https://inetgeek.com/methodology/, not a provider claim.

### Scales to zero

- Render: Supported ([source](https://render.com/docs/free))
- Railway: Limited — Serverless sleeps an idle service, but a slept service still holds a slot and is de-prioritised. ([source](https://docs.railway.com/reference/app-sleeping))
- Lean: 64% Render / 36% Railway — documented support level. inetGeek's own reading, computed from the two values above by the rules at https://inetgeek.com/methodology/, not a provider claim.

### Regions

- Render: Oregon, USA; Ohio, USA; Virginia, USA; Frankfurt, Germany; Singapore ([source](https://render.com/docs/regions))
- Railway: 4 regions: California, Virginia, Amsterdam, Singapore ([source](https://docs.railway.com/reference/regions))
- Lean: none. No documented basis to lean either way on this criterion.

### Uptime SLA

- Render: Enterprise only, and custom-priced. Hobby, Professional and Organization publish no uptime SLA, and no percentage is given for the Enterprise one. ([source](https://render.com/pricing))
- 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. ([source](https://railway.com/pricing))
- Lean: none. No documented basis to lean either way on this criterion.

### Audit logs

- Render: Built-in audit logging and monitoring for platform events. ([source](https://render.com/))
- Railway: Audit Logging is listed under Product Security, and Data Access Logging under Access Control. Neither is described further and no retention period is given. ([source](https://trust.railway.com/))
- Lean: neither leads — both document the same answer.

### Support on entry paid plan

- Render: Chat support, from the free Hobby plan upward. Professional ($25/month plus compute) adds seats, bandwidth and features but no separate support tier. ([source](https://render.com/pricing))
- Railway: Community support on Trial and on Hobby, the entry paid plan. Pro gets "Railway support"; Enterprise adds support SLOs. ([source](https://railway.com/pricing))
- Lean: 64% Render / 36% Railway — documented support level. inetGeek's own reading, computed from the two values above by the rules at https://inetgeek.com/methodology/, not a provider claim.

### HIPAA

- Render: Meet SOC 2 Type 2, HIPAA, ISO 27001, and GDPR requirements without overhead. ([source](https://render.com/))
- 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. ([source](https://trust.railway.com/))
- Lean: neither leads — both document the same answer.

### GDPR / data residency

- Render: Meet SOC 2 Type 2, HIPAA, ISO 27001, and GDPR requirements without overhead. ([source](https://render.com/))
- Railway: 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. ([source](https://trust.railway.com/))
- Lean: neither leads — both document the same answer.

## Which should you choose?

Pick Render if Workloads that need real background workers and persistent processes alongside web services, deployed from a repository or a Dockerfile. Managed Postgres and static sites run on the same platform.

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.

Consider something else: Render — Free web services spin down after 15 minutes without traffic, which makes the free tier unsuitable for anything that must answer immediately.

Consider something else: Railway — You need to run in a region outside California, Virginia, Amsterdam or Singapore.

## Documented by only one

One side documents these and the other does not. An absence is a missing source, not a stated "no" — except where a line says the other page was READ on a date and does not mention it, which is a sourced observation and the only one-sided case this site leans on.

- Credit card to start: Render: No — Free services run without one until the workspace's included bandwidth or pipeline minutes run out.
- When the free offer ends: Render: Free Postgres databases expire 30 days after creation, with a 14-day grace period to upgrade to a paid plan.
- Entry paid plan: Railway: $5 / month (Hobby)
- Egress over allowance: Railway: $0.05 / GB
- Included bandwidth: Render: Hobby: 5 GB; Pro: 25 GB; Scale: 1 TB; Enterprise: Custom
- Build allowance: Render: 500 build-pipeline minutes a month on Hobby, 1,000 on Pro, 5,000 on Scale. Minutes, not builds.
- Concurrent builds: Render: One active build per service, platform-wide on all plans; a new build cancels the in-progress one for that service
- Max request duration: Railway: 15 minutes while data keeps transferring; closed after 5 minutes with no data transferred. Websocket connections are exempt and can stay open indefinitely.
- 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.
- Containers: Render: Supported
- SOC 2: 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.
  - Render: not stated on https://render.com/, read 2026-09-21. Corrections: https://inetgeek.com/contact/
  - Lean: 22% Render / 78% Railway — documented, against a vendor page that does not state it (checked 2026-09-21).
- Encryption at rest: Railway: 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.
- Private networking / VPC: Render: Intuitive hosting and private networking for web services , Postgres databases , cron jobs , workflows , static sites , background jobs , key value stores , private services , WebSockets , edge caches , isolated environments ,

## Questions this comparison answers

**When you exceed a cap: Render or Railway?**

Render: Pipeline minutes: overage is auto-purchased, but with no payment method or once the monthly spend limit is reached Render stops running pipeline tasks, builds included.
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

**Storage (entry plan): Render or Railway?**

Render: No persistent disk is included on any instance type, including the entry `0.5c-512mb` plan; services run on an ephemeral filesystem unless a persistent disk is attached separately
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.

**Should I choose Render or Railway?**

Pick Render if Workloads that need real background workers and persistent processes alongside web services, deployed from a repository or a Dockerfile. Managed Postgres and static sites run on the same platform.
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.