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Fly.io vs Railway

Two sides of the hosting decision: container platform and paaS. When each fits, what it costs, who moves from one to the other, and what makers who chose it say.

Fly.ioContainer platformllms.txt
RailwayPaaSllms.txtMCP
Ask your AI about this, with this page as the source:ChatGPT ↗Claude ↗Perplexity ↗

Which fits you

Choose Fly.io if
  • Your users are spread across continents and the app runs in Docker

Use it whenYour app runs in Docker and should serve users in several regions.

Trade-offMore operations work than a PaaS.

Choose Railway if
  • You have a long-running server, a background worker and a database to deploy together

Use it whenYour app is a server plus a database and a worker, and you want them in one project.

Trade-offUsage-based billing needs watching; fewer regions and compliance options than a hyperscaler.

At a glance

Fly.ioRailway
Used by66 makers' products · 52 open-source projects112 makers' products
Cost at default usagerequests 5 million requests, data transfer out 100 GB, serverless function compute 100 GB-hours$15/mo Pay As You Go$45/mo Hobby
Moved to it on GitHubpull requests since Oct 202412 from Railway15 from Fly.io
Downloads
PricingUsage-based. · paid from $1.94/mo (shared-cpu-1x)Usage-based with a small monthly minimum. · paid from $5/mo minimum usage
Free tierNoNo
Open sourceNoNo
Incidents, 90 daysfrom its status page25+ (11 major)no public status feed

Cost as you grow

At 100k requests Fly.io costs less ($13 vs $40); and still does at 500M requests ($213 vs $540). They're different kinds of tool — container platform and paaS — so the prices don't buy the same thing.

$0$20$100$200$5000.10.5151050100500
RailwayFly.iox: requests per month (million requests), other usage scaled with it; held at 1 server (always-on app servers) · cheapest usable plan at each point, list prices · try your own numbers
The numbers, plan by plan
Requests per monthFly.ioRailway
0.1$13 Pay As You Go$40 Hobby
0.5$13 Pay As You Go$41 Hobby
1$13 Pay As You Go$41 Hobby
5$15 Pay As You Go$45 Hobby
10$17 Pay As You Go$50 Hobby
50$33 Pay As You Go$90 Hobby
100$53 Pay As You Go$140 Hobby
500$213 Pay As You Go$540 Hobby

From each vendor's pricing page: Fly.io, Railway.

Who moves from one to the other

Public pull requests on GitHub since Oct 2024 whose title says "Fly.io to Railway" or the reverse — real code changes, by developers in general rather than makers only.

Railway → Fly.io12 PRs
All matching pull requests on GitHub ↗
Fly.io → Railway15 PRs
All matching pull requests on GitHub ↗

What makers say

Makers on using it for hosting, from Product Hunt and Starter Story interviews, each linked to the source. Products with a page of their own and fuller notes first.

On Fly.io
Machines on Fly made it easy to build SSL-secured proxies and backends for keeping cross-internet Pig automations safe and encrypted.
Pig, the makerSep 2026 ↗
Shoutout to @flyDev - Deploying Mascotly globally was seamless thanks to Fly.io. It made it super easy to get our backend up and running close to users with minimal config. Fast, reliable, and developer-friendly - couldn’t ask for more! 🚀🌍
Mascotly, the makerSep 2026 ↗
Fly’s setup process was smooth and intuitive. Hosting APIs globally with minimal configuration was a huge time-saver.
Cure AI, the makerSep 2026 ↗
18 more on the Fly.io page →
On Railway
Railway makes deploying and scaling our backend effortless. Push to main, it's live. No Dockerfiles to debug, no infra to babysit. We went from zero to production in an afternoon.
Agentcard, the makerSep 2026 ↗
🚀 Shoutout to Railway for making API deployment a breeze! As a frontend developer without much backend experience, their platform made it super easy to set up and deploy changes.
npmpackage.info, the makerSep 2026 ↗
Railway is simple and handles deployment transitions really well. Old deployments drain cleanly while new ones come up, so users are never interrupted when we ship.
Sup AI, the makerMar 2026 ↗
60 more on the Railway page →

Loved and watch-outs

Themes that recur in makers' words and Hacker News comments, each linked to what it summarises.

Fly.io
Most loved
  • Apps deploy close to users around the world with minimal configuration. PH
  • The CLI makes deploys and scaling a single command. PH
  • Pricing is simple and predictable, with small containers costing very little. HNHN 2PH
Watch-outs
  • Its unmanaged Postgres needs manual recovery when nodes fail or run out of memory. HNHN 2
  • Repeated major outages undermine confidence in its stability. HN
On Product Hunt: 5.0★, 27 reviews · mentioned most: easy deployment, developer friendly, CLI
Railway
Most loved
  • A git push deploys a backend to production in minutes with no DevOps work. PHPH 2PH 3PH 4
  • Services, Postgres databases and buckets live in one place, with a marketplace of ready integrations. PHPH 2PH 3PH 4
  • Pay-per-resource pricing keeps small and self-hosted services cheap. PHPH 2PH 3HN
Watch-outs
  • Platform-wide outages, including one when Google Cloud blocked Railway's account, took customer services down. HNHN 2HN 3HN 4
  • It adds a middle layer on Google Cloud that controls your availability, features and security. HNHN 2
  • API tokens grant every operation without clear warnings, which let an agent instantly delete a production database. HNHN 2
On Product Hunt: 5.0★, 103 reviews · mentioned most: fast deployment, scalable infrastructure, no deep DevOps knowledge required

Who uses each

Fly.io66 makers' products
Cure AIFlight FollowerFormcraftsGitHub Wrapped 2025InfiniDeskMascotlyOboeOpenchangelogPigPinchRemySailhouse+54 more
Railway112 makers' products
24CallDeskAgentcardAgentRailAmamiAprilAviquillAximote In-Car AppBlink.newBreadcrumbChat ThingClawSecureClick+100 more
Used by both — often one replacing the other, or each for a different part of the product
BetterClawBlink.newstagewise

What makers pair each with

With Fly.io
Frontend Framework
Database
Transactional Email
Web Analytics
With Railway
Frontend Framework
Database
Transactional Email
LLM API

Neither quite right?

See the whole hosting decision →
VercelFrontend cloudNext.js apps — zero-config deploys and preview URLs.vs Fly.io →vs Railway →
NetlifyFrontend cloudStatic sites and JAMstack apps on any framework.vs Railway →
CloudflareEdge platformCheap global hosting with Workers, plus database (D1) and storage (R2) on the same platform.vs Railway →
RenderPaaSA Heroku-style platform for web services, cron jobs and Postgres.vs Fly.io →vs Railway →
Amazon Web ServicesHyperscaler cloudThe widest catalog of building blocks — Lambda, containers, managed databases, queues — to assemble your own infrastructure.vs Fly.io →vs Railway →
Hetzner CloudYour own serverA lot of CPU and RAM per euro, in European, US and Singapore regions.vs Fly.io →vs Railway →
CoolifyYour own serverA Heroku- or Vercel-style dashboard on your own server, with many one-click services.vs Railway →