Railway Pricing
Explained: What It Really Costs
No permanent free tier. A limited trial gives one-time credit; the Hobby plan is $5/mo including $5 of usage.
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Railway Plans & What They Include
Railway uses pure usage-based pricing. The Hobby plan is $5/month and includes $5 of usage credit; beyond that you pay for exactly the vCPU, memory and network you consume, metered by the second. This is fair for tiny workloads but hard to predict as apps grow.
There is no permanent free tier, the trial credit runs out, and because billing is fully metered, a memory leak or an idle-but-running service quietly costs money.
Limited one-time credit to evaluate. Not a recurring free tier.
Includes $5 usage credit. Metered beyond that.
Includes $20 usage, team features, higher limits.
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Add-ons & Metered Costs
// what the headline price hides
Hidden Costs of Railway
No permanent free tier
Railway's free trial is one-time credit, not a recurring free plan. Once it is spent, every running service costs money.
Metering is hard to forecast
Per-second usage billing is fair but unpredictable. An idle-but-running service or a memory leak quietly accumulates charges.
Costs scale with everything
Because compute, memory and egress are all metered separately, growth in any dimension increases the bill, there is no flat, knowable monthly number.
Runsite keeps Railway's modern developer experience but adds a permanent free tier and hard EUR spending caps, so metered growth can never produce a bill you did not approve.
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Runsite vs Railway
Side-by-side. No marketing fluff, just facts.
| Feature | Runsite | Railway |
|---|---|---|
| Free Tier | ✓ Permanent | ✓ $5 trial credit |
| Web Service Pricing | €5/mo | ~$5/mo (usage-based) |
| Managed PostgreSQL | ✓ From €5/mo | ✓ Usage-based |
| Spending Limits | ✓ Hard cap + alerts | ✓ Usage limits |
// in-depth comparison
Railway vs Runsite: What You Need to Know
Railway has a great developer experience and fair per-second metering, but the lack of a permanent free tier and fully usage-based billing make costs unpredictable, exactly the problem a hard spending cap solves.
Pricing FAQ
Railway Pricing: Common Questions
Is Railway free?
No permanent free tier. Railway offers a one-time trial credit, after which the Hobby plan costs $5/month including $5 of usage. Beyond the included credit, you pay metered usage.
How is Railway billed?
Railway uses pure usage-based pricing, metering vCPU, memory and network egress by the second. Your bill equals exactly what your services consume, which is fair but difficult to predict in advance.
Can my Railway bill grow unexpectedly?
Yes. Because everything is metered, an idle-but-running service, a traffic spike or a memory leak increases your bill. There is no hard spending cap on the standard plans, so monitoring usage is essential.
// same platform, other angles
Keep exploring
Predictable Pricing — in EUR, with a Hard Cap
A permanent free tier and spending limits you actually control. The opposite of a surprise Railway bill.
Start Free on Runsite →