Pick Railway when
Your services are idle most of the time. You have many small services or workers. Traffic is high, so $0.05 per GB matters. You want MySQL or MongoDB next to the app and are fine running backups yourself.
Side by side
From each vendor’s own pricing pages and docs.
| Railway | Render | |
|---|---|---|
| Billing model | Usage by the second on top of a plan. The plan fee is also your first $5 or $20 of usage | Workspace plan plus a fixed monthly price per instance, prorated by the second |
| Plans | Hobby $5/month, Pro $20/month per workspace | Hobby $0 (1 seat, up to 25 services), Pro $25/month (unlimited seats), Scale $499/month |
| Free option | One-time $5 trial for 30 days, then Free plan with $1/month credit and 0.5 GB RAM per service | Free web services: spin down after 15 minutes idle, about 1 minute to start, 750 hours per workspace per month |
| Compute price | $20 per vCPU-month and $10 per GB of RAM per month, for what you use | $7 (0.5 CPU, 512 MB), $25 (1 CPU, 2 GB), $85 (2 CPU, 4 GB), $135 (2 CPU, 8 GB) |
| Traffic | $0.05/GB from the first GB | 5 GB included on Hobby, 25 GB on Pro, 1 TB on Scale, then $0.15/GB |
| Postgres | One-click template, unmanaged (you own backups and tuning). Same usage rates | Managed. From $6/month (256 MB RAM), 1 GB storage included, then $0.30/GB, point-in-time recovery 3 days (Hobby) or 7 days (Pro) |
| Other databases | MySQL, Redis, MongoDB templates, also unmanaged | Key Value (Redis-compatible), from $10/month. No managed MySQL |
| Background workers | Any service, billed by usage | Own service type, paid instances only, from $7/month |
| Cron jobs | Any service on a schedule, runs at least 5 minutes apart, UTC | Billed per second, $1/month minimum per job, 12-hour run limit, UTC. Paid only |
| Persistent disk | Volumes $0.15/GB-month. Max 5 GB on Hobby, 50 GB on Pro | $0.25/GB-month. Not on free instances |
| Sleep when idle | Optional (Serverless): sleeps 5–10 minutes after the last outbound traffic | Only free instances sleep. Paid instances stay on |
| Regions | California, Virginia, Amsterdam, Singapore | Oregon, Ohio, Virginia, Frankfurt, Singapore. Region cannot be changed later |
| Company | US | US |
Sources: Railway pricing, Railway plans, Railway free trial, Railway volumes, Railway databases, Railway cron jobs, Railway Serverless, Railway regions, Render pricing, Render free instances, Render cron jobs, Render regions. Read on 2026-10-02.
What it costs per month
Three backend sizes, list prices, converted at $1 = €0.88, without VAT.
| Workload | Railway | Render | Hostim |
|---|---|---|---|
| Small API, 512 MB RAM, 1 GB Postgres, 20 GB traffic | €12.45 | €13.42 | €3.50 |
| Growing app, 2 GB RAM, 5 GB Postgres, 200 GB traffic | €34.10 | €54.08 | €9.50 |
| Busy backend, 4 GB RAM, 5 GB Postgres, 500 GB traffic | €64.90 | €146.48 | €12.50 |
How the numbers are built:
- Railway: Hobby plan. Railway bills CPU you actually use, so we assume the app averages 10% of one vCPU and the database 5%, with 0.5 GB of RAM. An app that keeps one vCPU busy all month adds about $18. Postgres stays at 5 GB because Hobby volumes stop there; above that you need Pro at $20 a month.
- Render: Hobby workspace ($0). The smallest instance with enough RAM: 0.5c-512mb, 1c-2g or 2c-4g. Postgres is the $6 instance with 1 GB of storage included, then $0.30 per GB. A busier database needs a larger instance, for example $19 for 1 GB of RAM. Traffic above the 5 GB included is $0.15 per GB.
- Hostim: that is us, so read this row with that in mind. Flat plan prices from our price list, traffic included.
Workers change the picture. Each Render worker is one more fixed instance, from $7. On Railway a worker that sits idle on a queue costs mostly its RAM. If you also look at Fly.io, our Render vs Railway vs Fly.io pricing post compares all three billing models.
Which one to pick
Pick Render when
You want the same bill every month. The CPU is busy most of the day. You want managed Postgres with point-in-time recovery. You need a free web service for a demo, or a Frankfurt region.
Compare with others when
Your app is mostly a Next.js frontend. Then see Railway vs Vercel. If the data must stay with an EU company, read the next section.
Price your own app
Same price models as the table above. Move the sliders to match your workload.
A small Express/Fastify/NestJS API runs in 512 MB. Postgres or Redis at 1 GB covers early traffic.
Managed app platforms (PaaS)
Push code or a Docker image; the platform handles ops.
Provider
Compute
Database
Egress
Total / mo
HostimRecommendedDedicated bare metal in Germany. Traffic included, no egress fees.
€3
€1
—
€4/mo
RailwayHobby plan. Usage-based: we assume the app averages 10% of one vCPU and the database 5%.Busy CPU raises the bill at $20 per vCPU-month.
€6
€5
€2
€14/mo
RenderHobby workspace. Frankfurt region available.Only 5 GB of bandwidth included, then $0.15/GB.
€6
€5
€6
€17/mo
Estimates from each provider's published list prices, read on 2026-09-23 and converted to EUR at $1 = €0.88. Excludes VAT. The (i) next to each provider states the plan and assumptions used. Pricing changes — check the provider's own page before you commit.
A third option, if you need the EU
We built Hostim, so we are not neutral here. Hostim runs containers, workers and managed Postgres, MySQL and Redis, like Railway and Render. The prices are flat per month, traffic is included, and everything runs in Germany, from a German company. What Hostim does not have: only one region, so users in the US or Asia see more latency. No global CDN. A smaller team and fewer integrations than either Railway or Render. It fits when the data has to stay under EU jurisdiction and you want a fixed bill. See the Railway and Render comparisons.
Comparisons
See how Hostim compares.
Side by side against the platform you are moving from, or a round-up covering several at once.
Explore other alternatives
Heroku Alternative (EU)Render Alternative (EU)Railway Alternative (EU)Vercel Alternative (EU)Sevalla AlternativeNeon Alternative (EU Postgres)Fly.io AlternativeCoolify AlternativeCapRover AlternativePortainer AlternativeDokku AlternativeNorthflank AlternativeDigitalOcean App Platform Alternative
Compare several platforms at once
Frequently asked questions
Is Railway cheaper than Render?
For most small and medium apps, yes, if the app is idle most of the time. A 512 MB API with a 1 GB Postgres and 20 GB of traffic costs about $14 a month on Railway Hobby and about $15 on Render. The gap grows with traffic: Railway charges $0.05 per GB, Render includes 5 GB on Hobby and then charges $0.15 per GB. Render gets more attractive when the CPU is busy all day, because a Render instance has a fixed price and Railway bills $20 per vCPU-month of real use.
Do Railway and Render have a free tier?
Both have one, with limits. Railway gives new accounts a one-time $5 trial for 30 days, then a Free plan with $1 of credit per month and 0.5 GB of RAM per service. Render has free web services, Postgres and Key Value: a free web service spins down after 15 minutes without traffic and takes about a minute to start again, each workspace gets 750 free instance hours per month, and a free Postgres database expires 30 days after creation.
Railway vs Render for Postgres: which is better?
Render Postgres is a managed service: fixed instance plans from $6 a month (256 MB RAM), 1 GB of storage included and then $0.30 per GB, point-in-time recovery for 3 days on Hobby and 7 days on Pro, and optional read replicas and high availability. Railway Postgres, MySQL, Redis and MongoDB are one-click templates that Railway itself calls unmanaged: you configure backups, tuning and upgrades. They are billed at normal usage rates, and the Hobby plan caps a volume at 5 GB. Render has no managed MySQL.
Which one is better for background workers and cron jobs?
Both run them. On Render, a background worker is its own service on a paid instance, from $7 a month for 512 MB. Cron jobs are billed per second of run time with a $1 minimum per cron job each month and stop after 12 hours. Neither type has a free instance. On Railway, a worker is a normal service billed by usage, and any service can run as a cron job. Railway runs must be at least 5 minutes apart. Both schedule in UTC.
Do Railway and Render have an EU region?
Yes. Railway has EU West in Amsterdam. Render has Frankfurt. On Render you cannot move a service or database to another region after you create it. Both companies are based in the US, so both are subject to US law such as the CLOUD Act, even when the servers are in the EU.
How do I migrate from Render to Railway, or from Railway to Render?
Railway reads a render.yaml file in your repository and creates the matching web services, workers, cron jobs and databases. In the other direction, Render publishes a manual migration guide and offers up to $10K in migration credits. In both directions you move Postgres data with pg_dump and pg_restore (or psql), then update DATABASE_URL. Plan a short downtime for the final data copy and DNS switch.
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