Render vs Railway vs Fly.io (2026): Pricing, Free Tiers and Which to Pick
Render vs Railway vs Fly.io in 2026: free tiers, always-on prices, Postgres costs and billing models side by side, with every price checked on 6 Nov 2026.
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Key takeaways
- Render is per-service pricing (always-on from $7); Railway and Fly.io bill for the resources you use.
- Only Render still has free web services, and its free Postgres expires after 30 days; Fly.io has a 7-day trial, Railway $1 of credit a month.
- Pick Render for a Heroku-like workflow, Railway for usage-based simplicity, Fly.io for multi-region apps.
Render, Railway and Fly.io are the three names that come up most when developers leave Heroku. All three deploy from Git and run containers, but they charge in very different ways, and that matters more than any feature list.
At a glance
| Render | Railway | Fly.io | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Billing model | Per service, fixed size | Usage (RAM + CPU used) | Usage (VM size × time) |
| Free tier | Free web services (sleep after 15 min) | $1 credit / month after a $5 trial | 7-day trial, $1 credit |
| Cheapest always-on | Starter, $7 (512 MB) | Hobby, $5 incl. $5 usage | ~$2.19 (256 MB) |
| Postgres from | $6 (free tier expires after 30 days) | Usage-based | $38 (Managed Postgres) |
| Best for | Heroku-style teams | Simple usage billing | Multi-region apps |
Render: predictable, per-service pricing
Render feels the most like Heroku. Each web service, worker, cron job and database has a fixed size and a fixed price.
- Free: 512 MB / 0.1 CPU web services that spin down after 15 minutes without traffic, with 750 instance hours per workspace per month. Free Postgres has 1 GB of storage and expires 30 days after creation, followed by a 14-day grace period.
- Paid: Starter at $7 (512 MB, 0.5 CPU), then Standard at $25 (2 GB, 1 CPU). Postgres starts at $6.
- 2026 change: workspace plans were restructured in April 2026. Pro is now $25 flat, with $0.15/GB bandwidth overage.
Pick Render if you want each service to have a known monthly cost and a familiar Heroku-like dashboard.
Railway: pay for what you use
Railway bills for the memory and CPU your services actually consume, about $10 per GB of RAM and $20 per vCPU per month, with a $5 Hobby plan that includes $5 of usage.
- Free: a one-time $5 trial (30 days), then a Free plan with $1 of credit per month (0.5 GB RAM).
- Databases: Postgres, MySQL and Redis run as regular services at the same resource rates.
- Watch out: usage billing is efficient for quiet apps but less predictable when traffic spikes, so watch your usage.
Pick Railway if you like a fast, visual workflow and want to pay for exact usage.
Fly.io: your app, everywhere
Fly.io runs apps as lightweight VMs in data centers around the world, so you can put compute next to your users.
- Free: none for new organizations, only a 7-day trial with $1 of credit. The old Hobby plan ended in October 2024.
- Compute: shared-cpu-1x from $2.19/month (256 MB), $3.69 (512 MB) or $6.70 (1 GB).
- Postgres: Managed Postgres starts at $38/month, with high availability, backups and pooling included.
Pick Fly.io if latency matters and you want to run in several regions.
A fourth option: flat pricing with a free database
If what you want is one predictable price and a database that doesn't expire, DockHosting (that's us) takes a different approach:
| Free | Hobby | Pro | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Price | $0 | $4 | $9 |
| Memory (shared by your apps) | 512 MB | 1 GB | 3 GB |
| Projects / databases | 2 / 1 | 3 / 2 | 10 / 6 |
| Always on | Sleeps after 1 h idle | Yes | Yes |
| Free Postgres expiry | Never | Never | Never |
No bandwidth metering, deploys with dock deploy or from GitHub, and managed PostgreSQL, MySQL, MongoDB, Redis and ClickHouse on a private network. The trade-off: one region (eu-central-1).
The short version
- Predictable per-service bills: Render
- Usage-based and visual: Railway
- Global, multi-region: Fly.io
- Flat price, free database that stays: DockHosting
For the wider picture, including Heroku, Northflank, DigitalOcean and Koyeb, read the 7 best Heroku alternatives in 2026.
Related: Railway app alternatives · Render free Postgres expired? · Free backend hosting compared
Frequently asked questions
Which is cheapest: Render, Railway or Fly.io?
For one small always-on service, Fly.io's shared-cpu-1x VMs start lowest ($2.19/month for 256 MB, $3.69 for 512 MB). Railway's Hobby plan is $5/month including $5 of usage. Render's Starter instance is $7/month. Postgres changes the picture: Render from $6, Fly.io Managed Postgres from $38, Railway billed by usage.
Do Render, Railway or Fly.io have a free tier in 2026?
Render has free web services that spin down after 15 minutes idle and a free Postgres that expires after 30 days. Railway has a one-time $5 trial, then a Free plan with $1 of credit per month. Fly.io has no free tier for new organizations, only a 7-day trial with $1 of credit.
Is there an alternative with a free database that doesn't expire?
Yes. DockHosting's Free plan includes one managed PostgreSQL database (500 MB) that doesn't pause or expire, plus an app on a .dockhosting.cloud subdomain. Always-on apps start at $4/month.
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Written by Doughmi ILYAS
Doughmi builds DockHosting, the developer-first platform behind dock deploy: the build system, the managed databases and the dashboard. On this blog: guides to shipping apps without running servers, written with the commands the platform actually ships.