Hosting · working at 10,000 users · rates as read 30 Sept 2026
On free tier, Railway does not publish it and Fly.io is No free plan: First 10GB free each month of egress. On cheapest paid plan, Railway is $ 5 minimum usage (Hobby) and Fly.io does not publish it. On rate above what's included, Railway is $ 0.05 per GB for services (egress) and Fly.io is $0.15/GB per month for volumes, $0.08/GB per month egress. StackTab sells neither of these and takes no referral fee on either: it scores them. Every figure was read off the named company's own page on or since 2026-09-28; the URLs and the dates are at the foot of this page, and a job re-fetches each one on a schedule and fails when a figure is no longer on the page it came from.
2 compared · 3 criteria, identical for every column · every competitor figure read off that company's own page · last verified 2026-09-28
| Service | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| RailwayContainers billed by the second, with a database next to them.verified 28 Sept 2026railway.com/pricing | $ | $ | $ |
| Fly.ioMicro-VMs you place in specific regions, billed by the second.verified 28 Sept 2026fly.io/docs/about/pricing | $ | $ | $ |
- Sorted by the total at
- Containers billed by the second, with a database next to them.verified 28 Sept 2026railway.com/pricing
- 1,000 users
- $
2121 Hobby - 10,000 users
- $
3131 Hobby - 100,000 users
- $
128128 Hobby
- Micro-VMs you place in specific regions, billed by the second.verified 28 Sept 2026fly.io/docs/about/pricing
- 1,000 users
- $
2.992.99 Pay as you go - 10,000 users
- $
1919 Pay as you go - 100,000 users
- $
176176 Pay as you go
| Criterion | Railway | Fly.io |
|---|---|---|
| Free tier | Not publishedRailway publishes no free plan. The cheapest entry is a 30-day trial with $5 of credits, "then $1 per month". | No free plan: First 10GB free each month of egressThere is no free tier and no monthly platform fee; the only thing given away is the first 10 GB of outbound transfer. |
| Cheapest paid plan | $ 5 minimum usage (Hobby)The $5 is a minimum spend that includes $5 of usage credit rather than a fee on top of usage. Pro is $ 20 minimum usage. | Not publishedFly.io publishes no named plans at all. You pay for machines, volumes and egress, so there is no plan fee to quote. |
| Rate above what's included | $ 0.05 per GB for services (egress)Compute is billed by the second: $ 0.00000386 per GB/sec of memory and $ 0.00000772 per vCPU/sec. | $0.15/GB per month for volumes, $0.08/GB per month egressMachines are billed while running, so an app that stops between requests costs materially less than the same app on a fixed instance. |
“Not published” means that company does not state the figure on the page cited at the foot of this page. It is not a claim that no such figure exists. A company that publishes no limit most likely has none, but “most likely” is not a fact, and this table prints what was read rather than what was inferred.
- Free tier: what the vendor gives you at $0 a month, in its own words
- Rate above what's included: the per-unit or per-transaction rate the vendor publishes for usage beyond the plan: the figure you need to work out a bill before you commit to one
Railway does not state it on railway.com. Railway publishes no free plan. The cheapest entry is a 30-day trial with $5 of credits, "then $1 per month". Fly.io: No free plan: First 10GB free each month of egress. There is no free tier and no monthly platform fee; the only thing given away is the first 10 GB of outbound transfer. Read from railway.com and fly.io on 2026-09-28. Free tier here means what the vendor gives you at $0 a month, in its own words.
Railway: $ 5 minimum usage (Hobby). The $5 is a minimum spend that includes $5 of usage credit rather than a fee on top of usage. Pro is $ 20 minimum usage. Fly.io does not state it on fly.io. Fly.io publishes no named plans at all. You pay for machines, volumes and egress, so there is no plan fee to quote. Read from railway.com and fly.io on 2026-09-28.
Railway: $ 0.05 per GB for services (egress). Compute is billed by the second: $ 0.00000386 per GB/sec of memory and $ 0.00000772 per vCPU/sec. Fly.io: $0.15/GB per month for volumes, $0.08/GB per month egress. Machines are billed while running, so an app that stops between requests costs materially less than the same app on a fixed instance. Read from railway.com and fly.io on 2026-09-28. Rate above what's included here means the per-unit or per-transaction rate the vendor publishes for usage beyond the plan: the figure you need to work out a bill before you commit to one.
Railway: You need a long-running process rather than a request handler: a queue worker, a websocket server, a cron that actually runs for ten minutes. Railway bills compute by the second, so an app that is busy in bursts costs what it used, and it will host the database next to it on the same bill. Fly.io: You need the app running in several regions and close to the user, and you are willing to think about machines rather than a platform. Fly.io has no plan fee at all, so a small multi-region deployment costs what its machines cost, and nothing else in this table prices region-by-region placement as an ordinary thing to do.
StackTab does not sell any of these and has nothing to gain from which one you choose: it scores them. Each case below is the one that option genuinely wins.
- Railway: You need a long-running process rather than a request handler: a queue worker, a websocket server, a cron that actually runs for ten minutes. Railway bills compute by the second, so an app that is busy in bursts costs what it used, and it will host the database next to it on the same bill.
- Fly.io: You need the app running in several regions and close to the user, and you are willing to think about machines rather than a platform. Fly.io has no plan fee at all, so a small multi-region deployment costs what its machines cost, and nothing else in this table prices region-by-region placement as an ordinary thing to do.
Prices and limits move, and a page quoting a stale one is worth less than a page quoting none. Every source is printed here so a reader can check it against the day they are reading this, and a job re-fetches each of these URLs on a schedule and fails when a figure above no longer appears on the page it came from.
- Railway: railway.com/pricing: Free tier, Cheapest paid plan, Rate above what's included. Read 2026-09-28.
- Fly.io: fly.io/docs/about/pricing/: Free tier, Cheapest paid plan, Rate above what's included. Read 2026-09-28.
Last verified 2026-09-28. https://stacktab.thecompound.tech/compare/railway-vs-fly-io