Cheaper Railway alternatives
Pricing data as of 2026-10-12 · refreshed weekly
Baseline: a Next.js app with startup-level traffic (~50,000 visits/month) costs $5/month on Railway (Hobby). Every provider below can run the same workload — ranked by real list price. Cheaper is not always better: a paas platform and a raw VPS differ in how much ops work lands on you.
| Provider | Type | Plan | $/month | Compare |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Orkestr | paas | Starter | $0 | Railway vs Orkestr → |
| DigitalOcean Droplets | vps | Basic 512MB | $4 | Railway vs DigitalOcean Droplets → |
| OVHcloud VPS | vps | VPS-1 | $4.54 | Railway vs OVHcloud VPS → |
| Vultr | vps | Cloud Compute 1GB | $5 | Railway vs Vultr → |
| Linode (Akamai) | vps | Nanode 1GB | $5 | Railway vs Linode (Akamai) → |
| AWS Lightsail | vps | $5 bundle | $5 | Railway vs AWS Lightsail → |
| Heroku | paas | Eco | $5 | Railway vs Heroku → |
| Fly.io | paas | shared-cpu-1x 512MB | $5.17 | Railway vs Fly.io → |
| DigitalOcean App Platform | paas | Shared 1 vCPU / 512MB | $5.48 | Railway vs DigitalOcean App Platform → |
| Hostinger VPS | vps | KVM 1 | $6.49 | Railway vs Hostinger VPS → |
| Scaleway | vps | DEV1-S | $7.1 | Railway vs Scaleway → |
| Netcup | vps | VPS 500 G12.5 | $7.79 | Railway vs Netcup → |
| Render | paas | 512 MB / 0.5 CPU | $17.35 | Railway vs Render → |
| Vercel | serverless | Pro | $20 | Railway vs Vercel → |
| Netlify | serverless | Pro | $20 | Railway vs Netlify → |
| Hetzner Cloud | vps | CPX22 (Regular Performance) | $23.59 | Railway vs Hetzner Cloud → |
| Koyeb | paas | eco-micro | $29 | Railway vs Koyeb → |
FAQ
What is the cheapest alternative to Railway?
For a Next.js app at startup traffic: Orkestr (Starter) at free versus $5/month on Railway, $5 less per month. It is a PaaS, so check what you give up before switching.
Is there a cheaper PaaS than Railway?
Yes, for this workload: Orkestr free, versus $5/month on Railway.
How is this comparison calculated?
Workload: Next.js needing ~512MB RAM for serving, ~50,000 visits and ~74GB of transfer a month. For each provider we take the cheapest plan that fits RAM, bandwidth and visit limits, plus metered egress where the provider charges it. Providers whose largest plan does not fit are left out.
How current are these prices?
They are official list prices as of 2026-10-12, re-checked against each provider's pricing page on a weekly cycle. Intro promos and coupons are not used in totals; taxes are not included unless a plan note says so.