Hosting · working at 10,000 users · rates as read 29 Sept 2026
On free tier, Vercel is $0 /mo. (Hobby): non-commercial use only and Railway does not publish it. On cheapest paid plan, Vercel is $20 /mo. (Pro) and Railway is $ 5 minimum usage (Hobby). On rate above what's included, Vercel is Fast Data Transfer 100 GB included on Hobby; on Pro it is covered by flat rate CDN and Railway is $ 0.05 per GB for services (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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| VercelThe Next.js host. Zero-config, and the bill is entirely usage-shaped.verified 21 Sept 2026vercel.com/pricing | $ | $ | $ |
| RailwayContainers billed by the second, with a database next to them.verified 21 Sept 2026railway.com/pricing | $ | $ | $ |
- Sorted by the total at
- The Next.js host. Zero-config, and the bill is entirely usage-shaped.verified 21 Sept 2026vercel.com/pricing
- 1,000 users
- $
2020 Pro - 10,000 users
- $
2020 Pro - 100,000 users
- $
175175 Pro
- Containers billed by the second, with a database next to them.verified 21 Sept 2026railway.com/pricing
- 1,000 users
- $
2121 Hobby - 10,000 users
- $
3131 Hobby - 100,000 users
- $
128128 Hobby
| Criterion | Vercel | Railway |
|---|---|---|
| Free tier | $0 /mo. (Hobby): non-commercial use onlyThe restriction is the whole story: a plan that forbids charging money for the app is not an option for a business, at any price. | Not publishedRailway publishes no free plan. The cheapest entry is a 30-day trial with $5 of credits, "then $1 per month". |
| Cheapest paid plan | $20 /mo. (Pro)Includes $20 of usage credit, so the first $20 of metered usage is absorbed before anything else appears on the bill. | $ 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. |
| Rate above what's included | Fast Data Transfer 100 GB included on Hobby; on Pro it is covered by flat rate CDNVercel moved CDN usage onto flat rate CDN on Pro after this row was read on 8 September 2026: "CDN requests, fast data transfer, and other resources are no longer billed directly." The 1 TB allowance and the $0.15 per GB overage this row recorded are both off the page. The $0.15 per GB still on the page belongs to static IPs on the shared pool. The metered rates that remain on Pro include function invocations starting at $0.60 per 1M, Fluid active CPU starting at $0.128 per hour and Fluid provisioned memory starting at $0.0106 per GB-hour. | $ 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. |
“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
Vercel: $0 /mo. (Hobby): non-commercial use only. The restriction is the whole story: a plan that forbids charging money for the app is not an option for a business, at any price. 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". Read from vercel.com and railway.com on 2026-09-28. Free tier here means what the vendor gives you at $0 a month, in its own words.
Vercel: $20 /mo. (Pro). Includes $20 of usage credit, so the first $20 of metered usage is absorbed before anything else appears on the bill. 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. Read from vercel.com and railway.com on 2026-09-28.
Vercel: Fast Data Transfer 100 GB included on Hobby; on Pro it is covered by flat rate CDN. Vercel moved CDN usage onto flat rate CDN on Pro after this row was read on 8 September 2026: "CDN requests, fast data transfer, and other resources are no longer billed directly." The 1 TB allowance and the $0.15 per GB overage this row recorded are both off the page. The $0.15 per GB still on the page belongs to static IPs on the shared pool. The metered rates that remain on Pro include function invocations starting at $0.60 per 1M, Fluid active CPU starting at $0.128 per hour and Fluid provisioned memory starting at $0.0106 per GB-hour. 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. Read from vercel.com and railway.com 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.
Vercel: You are shipping Next.js and you want the framework and the platform to be the same decision. Nothing else here matches Vercel on that, the $20 of included usage absorbs the metered lines for a long time on an app that mostly serves HTML and JSON, and the preview-deployment workflow is the one every other platform is copying. 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.
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.
- Vercel: You are shipping Next.js and you want the framework and the platform to be the same decision. Nothing else here matches Vercel on that, the $20 of included usage absorbs the metered lines for a long time on an app that mostly serves HTML and JSON, and the preview-deployment workflow is the one every other platform is copying.
- 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.
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.
- Vercel: vercel.com/pricing: Free tier, Cheapest paid plan, Rate above what's included. Read 2026-09-28.
- Railway: railway.com/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/vercel-vs-railway