Railway vs Render — free-tier comparison
At a glance
Railway: Cheapest paid plan · Render: Most generous free tier
Railway
PaaS
30-day trial with $5 usage credit, then $1/month minimum
Paid from $1/month
- $5 trial credit
- 30-day free trial
- 512MB RAM per service
- Provisions Postgres, MySQL and Redis in a click
- Deploy from Git, a template or a Dockerfile
- Free usage is a limited trial credit, not an always-free tier
Best for
- Full-stack apps and APIs that need a database
- Background workers and cron-style jobs
Render
PaaS
750 hours/month for web services
Paid from $7/month
- Free static sites
- 750 hours/month for web services
- Free managed PostgreSQL (30 days)
- One platform for web services, static sites, databases, workers and cron
- Auto-deploys from Git with free TLS
- Free web services sleep after about 15 minutes of inactivity
Best for
- Full-stack apps and APIs that need an always-deployable server
- Side projects that want a free database to start
The catch?
Railway
- Trial that expires
Render
- Sleeps when idle
Detailed comparison
| Railway | Render | |
|---|---|---|
| Free tier & pricing | ||
| Free tier ↑ better | Trial credit | Perpetual (sleeps) ★ |
| Paid from ↓ better | $1/mo ★ | $7/mo |
| Regions ↑ better | 4 regions ★ | 4 regions ★ |
| PaaS | ||
| Included RAM ↑ better | 512 MB ★ | 512 MB ★ |
| Compute hours ↑ better | Trial credits | 750 hrs/mo |
FAQ
Is Railway free?
Railway offers a 30-day trial with $5 in usage credits, then starts from a low monthly paid plan rather than a perpetual free tier.
Can I host a database?
Yes. Postgres, MySQL, Redis and MongoDB can be provisioned as plugins right next to your app.
Why does my free service go to sleep?
Free web services spin down after about 15 minutes of inactivity and cold-start on the next request. Paid instances stay always-on.
Is the database free forever?
No. Render's free PostgreSQL database expires 30 days after creation, with a short grace period before deletion.