Railway deploys code or images and meters CPU, memory, volumes, and outbound traffic per service. It helps launch a small always-on app or database quickly.
As of 2026-10, Free is $0/month; new Trial accounts receive a one-time $5 credit, and the Free plan has $1 usage credit monthly. Hobby has a $5 monthly minimum including $5 usage, and Pro has a $20 minimum. CPU is $20/vCPU-month, RAM $10/GB-month, egress $0.05/GB, and volumes $0.15/GB-month, prorated by runtime.
The minimum payment is not unlimited usage. A short-lived service differs from an always-on one. The demo assumes 0.25 vCPU, 0.5 GB RAM, and 10 GB egress while varying runtime.
When to use
Use Railway for always-on apps and databases; compare Cloud Run for scale-to-zero containers and Render when a sleeping free web instance is acceptable.