Railway vs Render — free-tier comparison
This comparison is calculated from verified service fields. It is not presented as an editorial review and remains excluded from the index until reviewed.
At a glance
Railway: Cheapest paid plan · Render: Most regions
PaaS
30-day trial with $5 credit, then $1 monthly usage credit on Free
Paid from $5/month
- $5 trial credit
- 30-day free trial
- $1 monthly usage credit after trial
- Provisions Postgres, MySQL and Redis in a click
- Deploy from Git, a template or a Dockerfile
- The ongoing Free plan includes only $1 of monthly resource usage
Best for
- Full-stack apps and APIs that need a database
- Background workers and cron-style jobs
PaaS
512 MB web service, 750 hours/month, sleeps after 15 minutes; free Postgres expires after 30 days
Paid from $7/month
- Free static sites
- 750 hours/month for web services
- Free managed PostgreSQL (30 days)
- One platform for web services, static sites, databases, workers and cron
- Auto-deploys from Git with free TLS
- Free web services sleep after about 15 minutes of inactivity
Best for
- Full-stack apps and APIs that need an always-deployable server
- Side projects that want a free database to start
The catch?
Railway
- Credit-based allowance
- Suspends at the limit
- Some constraints remain unconfirmed
Render
- Sleeps when idle
- Suspends at the limit
- Some constraints remain unconfirmed
Detailed comparison
| Railway | Render | |
|---|---|---|
| Free tier & pricing | ||
| Free tier ↑ better | Monthly credit ★ | Perpetual (sleeps) ★ |
| Paid from ↓ better | $5/mo ★ | $7/mo |
| Regions ↑ better | 4 regions | 5 regions ★ |
| PaaS | ||
| Included RAM ↑ better | 512 MB ★ | 512 MB ★ |
| Compute hours ↑ better | Credit-based | 750 hrs/mo |
FAQ
Railway starts with a 30-day trial and $5 credit. After that, the $0 Free plan includes $1 of resource usage each month; Hobby starts at $5 per month.
Yes. Postgres, MySQL, Redis and MongoDB can be provisioned as plugins right next to your app.
Free web services spin down after about 15 minutes of inactivity and cold-start on the next request. Paid instances stay always-on.
No. Render's free PostgreSQL database expires 30 days after creation, with a short grace period before deletion.