Railway launched in 2020 as a modern alternative to Heroku, targeting developers who want the simplicity of PaaS without the limitations or high costs. The platform supports any language or framework that runs in a Docker container, with automatic detection and building for popular stacks (Node.js, Python, Go, Rust, Ruby, etc.). What makes Railway special is its developer experience — connect a GitHub repo and Railway automatically detects the framework, builds, and deploys with zero configuration. Databases (PostgreSQL, MySQL, Redis, MongoDB) can be provisioned in one click and are automatically connected to your application. Railway's pricing model is usage-based: you pay for actual CPU, memory, and network consumption rather than provisioned resources. The Hobby plan at $5/mo includes $5 of usage credit, which is enough for small projects. Pro plans offer team collaboration, higher resource limits, and private networking. Railway supports environment variables, custom domains, cron jobs, and TCP proxying. Their dashboard provides real-time logs, deployment history, and resource metrics. While Railway lacks the scale of DigitalOcean or the edge deployment of Fly.io, it excels at making deployment frictionless for full-stack applications with databases — the experience Heroku used to provide at its peak, now modernized and more affordable.
Add a benchmark URL in admin and run the provider benchmark cron to display measured speed, security, and availability signals here.
Automatic framework detection, building, and deployment from GitHub — true zero-configuration for most stacks.
PostgreSQL, MySQL, Redis, and MongoDB provisioned in one click with automatic connection to your app.
Pay for actual consumption, not provisioned resources — cost-effective for variable workloads.
The simplicity Heroku used to offer, modernized with better pricing, faster deploys, and no free tier removal drama.
Live logs, deployment history, and resource usage metrics in a clean, modern dashboard.
Founded in 2020 with ~50 employees — less mature and smaller support team than established providers.
Applications deploy to a single region — no multi-region or edge deployment like Fly.io or Cloudflare.
Usage-based billing without spend caps on lower plans can lead to unexpected charges.
Documentation is growing but not as comprehensive as Heroku, DigitalOcean, or Vercel.