What is Railway?
Railway is a cloud platform for deploying apps, databases, background workers and cron jobs. You connect a GitHub repo or a Docker image and Railway builds and runs it. You pay a base plan fee that counts toward usage, then pay per second for the CPU, memory, storage and egress your services use. Railway also offers isolated Linux VMs (sandboxes) for agents and untrusted code.
Railway pricing (2026)
Railway plans and pricing, verified October 2026, are below. Pricing can change, so confirm the latest on the official Railway site. Hobby and Pro are monthly subscriptions, and each fee counts toward that month's resource usage. Usage above the included amount is billed at Railway's published resource rates. New users get a 30-day trial with a one-time $5 credit.
| Plan | Price | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| Free | $0/mo, with $1 of free credit per month after the trial | Small apps and testing |
| Hobby | $5/mo, includes $5 of usage | Side projects, single developer |
| Pro | $20/mo, includes $20 of usage, unlimited workspace seats | Teams running production apps |
| Enterprise | Custom | SSO, audit logs, HIPAA BAAs, SLOs |
Key features
- Deploy from GitHub or a Docker image
- Usage-based billing per second for CPU, memory and volumes
- Managed databases, volumes and object storage buckets
- Replicas, global regions and cron jobs
- Sandboxes and VMs for agents and untrusted code
Who is Railway best for? (pros & cons)
Pros
- Fast setup with little configuration
- You pay for what you use, not for idle capacity
- Pro includes unlimited workspace seats
Cons
- Usage billing makes monthly cost harder to predict
- Free plan limits are tight after the trial
- Unverified trial accounts get restricted network access
Railway vs alternatives
| Tool | Starting price | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| Render | Free tier, paid instances from $7/month | Teams that want fixed per-instance pricing |
| Heroku | Eco dynos from $5/month | Teams already on the Heroku ecosystem |
Railway: company snapshot
Quick reference details about Railway as a company. Items marked not confirmed could not be verified from Railway's own site.
| Founded | 2020 |
|---|---|
| Employees | Not confirmed |
| Headquarters | San Francisco, California |
| Revenue | Not publicly disclosed |
| Products & services | Usage-based cloud platform for deploying apps, databases, workers and sandboxes. |
| Best for | Developers, startups and product teams shipping web apps and APIs |
| Website | railway.com |
Stack it with
Railway runs your app. Add automation and analytics around it.