Railway vs Self-hosted VPS

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.
Self-hosted VPS is cheaper by $26.48/mo (64%) for this workload. Switch presets or adjust the numbers above to see how the gap changes at different scales.
RailwayPro
$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
Self-hosted VPSVPS
Lower cost
$15.00/mo
VPS — medium (2 dedicated vCPU, 8 GB RAM)
App server + cache + background workers
$15.00
Cloudflare CDN + R2
Free tier handles most workloads
incl.
Database — add-on
Optional: managed DB ~$25/mo for managed Postgres, Auth, Storage (+$25/mo if needed)
incl.
Add a managed database (+$25/mo) for Postgres, Auth, Storage, and Realtime. Or run Postgres on the same VPS for free. You take on patching, monitoring, and backups — budget ~2–4 hours/month. Add ~$5–15/mo for managed monitoring (Better Stack, Sentry) and email (Resend) if you want them off your plate.
Rates verified 2026-05 — Self-hosted VPS 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 Self-hosted VPS excels at
  • Lowest cost per unit of compute — a $15/mo VPS outperforms a $85/mo Render Pro instance on raw CPU.
  • No per-request, per-invocation, or egress charges — traffic spikes are free.
  • Full control: custom runtimes, native cron, WebSockets, long-running processes, any Node.js version.
  • Run your database, cache, and app on one server — no inter-service network latency or egress costs.
  • No vendor lock-in — switch providers with a single rsync + DNS change.
Compatible

MakerKit deploys to Railway and Self-hosted VPS

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

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