Railway vs Render

Side-by-side cost comparison — enter your workload and see which platform is cheaper for your traffic.

1. Pick a workload
Choose the preset closest to your project size.
2. Fine-tune (optional)
Override the preset values with your real numbers.
Railway is cheaper by $43.52/mo (51%) for this workload. Switch presets or adjust the numbers above to see how the gap changes at different scales.
RailwayPro
Lower cost
$41.48/mo
Pro plan
$20/mo flat — includes $20 resource credit, unlimited seats
$20.00
Compute — 1 vCPU / 1 GB RAM
$20.00 CPU + $10.00 RAM
$30.00
Network Egress
214.6 GB × $0.05/GB
$10.73
Volume Storage
5 GB × $0.15/GB-mo
$0.75
Included Resource Credit
$20 credit applied
$-20.00
Instance recommendation: 1 vCPU / 1 GB RAM for your workload. Adjust in the advanced panel if your real instance is larger or smaller. Pro includes unlimited seats, so team size does not change the Railway bill. Railway charges no per-request fees. Costs are purely compute + egress + storage — predictable scaling behavior. Database not included in this estimate. If you use Railway's managed Postgres add it at $10-40/mo depending on instance size.
Rates verified 2026-09 — Railway pricing page
RenderPaid
$85.00/mo
Web Service — Standard (1 vCPU, 2 GB)
Always-on instance, no per-request charges
$25.00
Bandwidth
214.6 GB used / 100 GB included
$60.00
Build Minutes
160 min / 400 included
incl.
Estimate covers the web service only — database, Redis, background workers, and cron jobs are separate services with their own instance costs. PostgreSQL not included. Add $7-90/mo depending on the tier needed for your database storage. IMPORTANT: Render's pricing page could not be automatically verified in 2026-Q1 — confirm current rates before purchasing.
Rates verified 2026-Q1 — Render pricing page
What Railway excels at
  • Container-based (not serverless) — no cold starts, consistent latency.
  • Run your database, Redis, and background workers on the same platform.
  • Hobby plan at $5/month is excellent value for solo projects; Pro at $20/month flat with unlimited seats for teams.
  • Scale-to-zero on staging environments keeps development costs near zero.
  • Runs on Railway Metal (own hardware), not AWS, in 4 regions (US West, US East, EU West, Southeast Asia), with a built-in CDN since June 2026.
What Render excels at
  • Fixed instance tiers give predictable bills — no per-request or per-CPU-second surprises.
  • Multi-language platform: run Python, Go, and Ruby services alongside Next.js.
  • Free tier for static sites and background workers (with caveats).
  • One-click managed PostgreSQL, Redis, and cron jobs alongside your web service.
  • Automatic SSL, deploys from Git, and PR preview environments included.
Compatible

MakerKit deploys to Railway and Render

Next.js 16 App Router with Dockerfile included — deploy to your preferred hosting platform without touching config.

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