Railway
Railway Corp · 🚀 PaaS
Railway is an infrastructure platform where you can provision infrastructure, develop with it locally, and then deploy to the cloud.
Free-tier constraints
- Offer type
- Monthly credit
- When idle
- Stays active
- Credit card
- Not required
- Commercial use
- Unknown
- At the limit
- Service suspends
- Data expiry
- Not published
Free-tier compatibility
- —Static hosting
- —Serverless
- ✓Long-running processes
- ✓Docker
- ✓WebSockets
- ✓Cron
- ✓Background workers
- ✓Persistent disk
- ✓Custom domains
Overview
Railway makes provisioning and deploying back-end services feel like a front-end workflow. Connect a repository or start from a template, and Railway detects your stack, provisions databases — Postgres, MySQL, Redis, MongoDB — and deploys with sensible defaults. Its CLI lets you develop against the same infrastructure locally.
Railway starts new accounts with a 30-day trial and $5 in usage credits. After the trial, the $0 Free plan includes $1 of monthly resource usage, with up to 0.5 GB RAM, 1 vCPU and 0.5 GB of volume storage per service. It is an ongoing credit-based free plan, but the allowance is small enough that an always-running app can outgrow it quickly.
It suits full-stack apps, APIs, background workers and anything that needs a real database next to the app — without the ceremony of wiring up cloud primitives yourself.
Sources and verification
Checked 2026-08-18Pros
- ✓Provisions Postgres, MySQL and Redis in a click
- ✓Deploy from Git, a template or a Dockerfile
- ✓Clean usage-based pricing — idle services cost little
- ✓Strong developer experience with a capable CLI
- ✓Great for stateful apps and background workers
Cons
- ✕The ongoing Free plan includes only $1 of monthly resource usage
- ✕Free and trial terms have changed repeatedly over time
- ✕Shared CPU on the free credit
- ✕Free-tier deploys are restricted during regional peak hours
Best for
- →Full-stack apps and APIs that need a database
- →Background workers and cron-style jobs
- →Developers who want managed Postgres or Redis with little setup
Compare with
Getting started
- 1 Sign up and create a new project
- 2 Deploy from a GitHub repo, a template, or a Dockerfile
- 3 Add a database plugin (Postgres, MySQL or Redis) if needed
- 4 Set environment variables and a start command
- 5 Generate a domain or attach your own
Related guides
Features
- ✓One-click Deployments
- ✓Database Provisioning
- ✓Environment Variables
- ✓Custom Domains
- ✓Automatic Scaling
- ✓Team Collaboration
Languages
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.
Yes. Railway can build from a Dockerfile or auto-detect common stacks.
Deploy these projects to Railway
Open-source projects and templates that run on Railway's free tier.