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Hetzner Cloud vs Railway

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

Hetzner CloudYour own server
RailwayPaaSllms.txtMCP
Ask your AI about this, with this page as the source:ChatGPT ↗Claude ↗Perplexity ↗

Which fits you

Choose Hetzner Cloud if
  • You want a flat monthly bill and full control, and don't mind running one server

Use it whenCost per CPU and RAM matters more than a long list of managed services.

Trade-offFewer managed services than big clouds, and account verification can be strict.

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

Hetzner CloudRailway
Used by100 makers' products112 makers' products
Cost at default usagerequests 5 million requests, data transfer out 100 GB, serverless function compute 100 GB-hours$13/mo CPX12$45/mo Hobby
Downloads
PricingPay-as-you-go hourly or monthly billing per server; no free tier.Usage-based with a small monthly minimum. · paid from $5/mo minimum usage
Free tierNoNo
Open sourceNoNo

Cost as you grow

At 100k requests Hetzner Cloud costs less ($13 vs $40); and still does at 500M requests ($13 vs $540). They're different kinds of tool — your own server and paaS — so the prices don't buy the same thing.

$0$20$100$200$5000.10.5151050100500
RailwayHetzner Cloudx: 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 monthHetzner CloudRailway
0.1$13 CPX12$40 Hobby
0.5$13 CPX12$41 Hobby
1$13 CPX12$41 Hobby
5$13 CPX12$45 Hobby
10$13 CPX12$50 Hobby
50$13 CPX12$90 Hobby
100$13 CPX12$140 Hobby
500$13 CPX12$540 Hobby

From each vendor's pricing page: Hetzner Cloud, Railway.

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 Hetzner Cloud
"mb-3">· Brooce I procure servers from: · Servers.com · SoYouStart · Gorilla Servers · Hetzner What have been the most influential books, podcasts, or other resources? If you want to l…
Indifferent Broccoli, the makerAug 2021 ↗
Tech Stack - Bunny, Hertzner , TinyBird , Vercel , SupaBase , Business messaging platform - Crisp Affiliate
Beam Analytics, the makerFeb 2023 ↗
Shout out for being cheap and reliable! My classic setup with a Caddy reverse proxy and Docker worked perfectly.
Jukebox, the makerSep 2026 ↗
1 more on the Hetzner Cloud 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.

Hetzner Cloud
Most loved
  • Servers cost a fraction of hyperscaler prices for strong price-to-performance. HNHN 2PH
  • Storage Boxes are a cheap offsite target for backups. HNHN 2HN 3HN 4
  • As an EU company, it appeals to teams avoiding US hosting. HNHN 2HN 3HN 4
Watch-outs
On Product Hunt: 5.0★, 11 reviews · mentioned most: affordable pricing
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

Hetzner Cloud100 makers' products
Beam AnalyticsIndifferent BroccoliSwipeartviral.appAI Santa ClausBrand.devBubbl WidgetbuilderBuilder's Bid BookCotypistCraftUICreavit Studio+88 more
Railway112 makers' products
24CallDeskAgentcardAgentRailAmamiAprilAviquillAximote In-Car AppBlink.newBreadcrumbChat ThingClawSecureClick+100 more

What makers pair each with

With Hetzner Cloud
Transactional Email
Frontend Framework
Payments
Database
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 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 Railway →
Fly.ioContainer platformDocker apps that should run close to users in many regions.vs Hetzner Cloud →vs Railway →
Amazon Web ServicesHyperscaler cloudThe widest catalog of building blocks — Lambda, containers, managed databases, queues — to assemble your own infrastructure.vs Hetzner Cloud →vs Railway →
CoolifyYour own serverA Heroku- or Vercel-style dashboard on your own server, with many one-click services.vs Railway →