Railway made it easy to move fast. Connect a GitHub repository, push code, and get a running application without dealing with servers. Developers adopted it quickly, and for good reason — the developer experience is polished and the defaults are sensible.
But Railway's pricing structure creates friction at two critical moments: when you're starting out and when you start to scale. If you're evaluating a Railway alternative, this guide gives you a direct, factual comparison so you can make an informed decision.
Why Developers Look for Railway Alternatives
Most developers look for alternatives after running into one or more of the same limitations.
The $5 trial credit runs out fast. Railway offers new users $5 in one-time trial credit, valid for 30 days. A single 512MB container running continuously consumes that credit in roughly 25 days. Build one staging environment or add a database, and it's gone in under two weeks.
There is no permanent free tier. Once the trial ends, you're billed on usage. If your usage falls below a meaningful threshold, Railway charges the Hobby plan minimum of $5 per month. There is no ongoing free tier for low-traffic personal projects or early-stage apps.
Billing unpredictability creates anxiety. Railway uses usage-based billing that resets monthly. Without per-second precision or a clear cost dashboard during active development, many developers find the final bill harder to predict than expected.
Cron job support is available but limited. Railway supports cron jobs as a service type, but the implementation requires running a dedicated service, which counts toward billing. For teams that need lightweight scheduled tasks, this adds cost.
These aren't deal-breakers for every team. But they matter enough that a significant number of developers evaluate alternatives before committing to Railway.
Quick Comparison: Railway vs Out Plane
| Feature | Railway | Out Plane |
|---|---|---|
| Free credit | $5 (30-day trial) | $20 (30-day trial) |
| Permanent free tier | None | Hobby tier (3 instances) |
| Pricing model | Usage-based, $5/mo minimum on Hobby | Per-second billing, no minimums on free tier |
| Managed PostgreSQL | Available (separate pricing) | Included with managed plans |
| Managed Redis | Available | Available |
| GitHub integration | Yes | Yes |
| Auto-deploy on push | Yes | Yes |
| Custom domains | Yes | Yes |
| SSL certificates | Automatic | Automatic |
| Scaling | Vertical + horizontal | Automatic, per-second |
| Build system | Nixpacks + Dockerfile | Buildpacks + Dockerfile |
| Monitoring | Basic metrics + logs | Runtime metrics, HTTP logs, application logs |
| Multi-region | Limited | Nuremberg, Finland, US (Virginia, Oregon), Singapore |
Pricing Comparison
Understanding the cost structure of each platform requires looking at both the free offering and what happens as usage grows.
Railway Pricing
Railway's Hobby plan costs $5 per month and includes $5 in usage credits. In practice, you pay $5 per month and receive $5 in compute credit — the two offset each other at low usage. If your usage exceeds $5, you pay the difference.
The Trial plan is separate: new accounts get $5 in one-time credit without a subscription, but it expires after 30 days.
Railway's Pro plan costs $20 per month with $20 in included credits. For teams with multiple developers, the pricing scales per seat.
Managed databases on Railway are billed separately on usage. A small PostgreSQL instance running continuously adds $5 to $15 per month depending on storage and compute configuration.
Out Plane Pricing
New Out Plane accounts receive $20 in free credit, valid for 30 days. No credit card is required to start.
Out Plane's Hobby tier is free with no monthly minimum. It supports up to three running application instances. Low-traffic projects, side projects, and early-stage applications run indefinitely on the Hobby tier without cost.
Paid plans use per-second billing. You pay for the exact compute seconds your application uses. A service that handles traffic only during business hours costs less than a service running at full capacity around the clock.
Managed PostgreSQL is available with automated backups, replication, and point-in-time recovery. Managed Redis is available for caching and session storage.
Cost Example: Small Production App
Consider a team running one web application with a PostgreSQL database. The application handles moderate traffic during business hours and minimal traffic overnight.
On Railway Hobby ($5/month with $5 credit), one application container plus a small database instance can easily consume the full $5 credit before the month ends, resulting in additional charges on top of the $5 plan fee.
On Out Plane, the same application running within the Hobby tier's instance limits has no monthly minimum. Per-second billing means idle overnight hours cost significantly less than peak hours.
The difference compounds over time, especially for teams managing multiple projects or running staging environments alongside production.
Key Differences
Free Credit: $5 vs $20
The practical difference between Railway's $5 trial and Out Plane's $20 trial is significant. $20 in credit supports a realistic development workflow for a full month: a primary application instance, a staging environment, and a managed database. $5 covers a single application instance for approximately three to four weeks before running dry.
For developers evaluating a platform before committing, more trial credit means more time to build something real rather than running benchmark exercises against the clock.
Trial-Only vs Permanent Free Tier
This is the most important structural difference between the two platforms.
Railway's free offering is a temporary trial. Once it expires, you pay for all usage plus the $5 monthly minimum. There is no path to running a low-traffic application on Railway indefinitely without incurring cost.
Out Plane's Hobby tier is permanent. Personal projects, early-stage SaaS experiments, and low-traffic production applications run on the Hobby tier without a monthly minimum. You only pay when usage exceeds what the Hobby tier covers.
For developers building multiple projects, maintaining portfolio applications, or running a production application that hasn't yet reached monetization, a permanent free tier changes the economics substantially.
Usage-Based Billing Precision
Both Railway and Out Plane use usage-based billing models, but the precision differs.
Railway charges based on vCPU-hours and memory-GB-hours. The billing granularity is hourly. If your application runs for any portion of an hour, that full hour counts toward billing.
Out Plane bills per second. An application that runs for 30 minutes is billed for exactly 30 minutes. This precision benefits applications with variable traffic patterns, scheduled tasks, and development environments that are frequently stopped and restarted.
Database Offerings
Railway offers managed PostgreSQL and MySQL databases as add-on services billed separately from application compute. The setup process is straightforward, but each database instance adds to the monthly bill from the first day.
Out Plane provides managed PostgreSQL with automated backups and point-in-time recovery. Managed Redis is available for caching and queue workloads. The pricing follows the same per-second model as application compute, which means low-traffic databases cost less than constantly active ones.
When Railway Still Makes Sense
Railway has genuine strengths. It's not the right choice for every team, but it is the right choice for some.
Teams with existing Railway projects. Migrating a working application to a new platform introduces risk. If your Railway deployment is stable and your team is familiar with the interface, the cost difference may not justify a migration.
Quick prototypes with a defined lifespan. If you're building a demo or proof-of-concept with a two-week runway, the $5 trial credit is sufficient for a simple deployment. You don't need the permanence of a Hobby tier for a project you'll shut down.
Teams that prefer Nixpacks. Railway uses Nixpacks as its default build system, which provides automatic dependency detection for many languages. Developers comfortable with Nixpacks and its configuration format may prefer staying within that ecosystem.
Small apps within the $5 credit window. If your application consistently uses less than $5 per month in Railway compute, the Hobby plan effectively costs nothing above the monthly fee offset by credits. Small applications with very light traffic fit this profile.
When Out Plane Is a Better Fit
You need more free credit to evaluate the platform properly. $20 in trial credit supports a realistic multi-service development workflow for a full month. This is enough time to deploy an application, connect a database, test auto-scaling behavior, and assess whether the platform meets your requirements before committing to a paid plan.
You're running personal projects or pre-revenue applications. The permanent Hobby tier eliminates the pressure to monetize quickly to offset platform costs. Deploy a side project, keep it running indefinitely, and upgrade when your traffic demands it.
You're managing multiple environments. Staging and production environments running simultaneously double your compute costs. Per-second billing on Out Plane means staging environments that are idle for most of the day cost a fraction of what always-on hourly billing would charge.
You want multiple managed databases. Out Plane's managed PostgreSQL and Redis support multiple database versions and connection pooling out of the box. Teams running PostgreSQL for primary storage and Redis for sessions or queues can provision both from the same platform without managing separate services.
Your team is distributed across regions. Out Plane supports deployment to Nuremberg, Helsinki, Ashburn (Virginia), Hillsboro (Oregon), and Singapore. This makes it practical to run production infrastructure close to your users without managing multiple platform accounts.
Summary
Railway is a well-designed platform with a clean interface and a strong developer experience. Its limitations are structural: a small trial credit, no permanent free tier, and hourly billing granularity that makes low-usage applications more expensive than they need to be.
Out Plane addresses each of these directly. The $20 trial credit is four times larger, giving developers enough runway to make a real evaluation. The permanent Hobby tier supports up to three application instances without a monthly minimum. Per-second billing means you pay for exactly what you use, nothing more.
If you're building something new, the free tier difference alone is worth starting with Out Plane. If you're evaluating a migration from Railway, the combination of per-second billing and no monthly minimums on low-traffic applications often produces meaningful cost savings.
Key differences at a glance:
- $20 free credit vs $5 trial credit
- Permanent Hobby tier vs trial-only free offering
- Per-second billing vs hourly billing granularity
- Managed PostgreSQL and Redis with per-second pricing
- Multi-region deployment across Europe, US, and Singapore
Ready to switch? Get started with Out Plane and receive $20 in free credit. No credit card required.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I migrate my Railway app to Out Plane?
Yes. Most Railway applications are containerized or use standard buildpack detection, which Out Plane also supports. You connect your GitHub repository, set your environment variables, and deploy. The process is identical to a new deployment. Your existing Railway databases would need to be migrated or provisioned fresh on Out Plane.
Does Out Plane support the same languages as Railway?
Out Plane supports Node.js, Python, Go, Java, Ruby, PHP, .NET, and Rust through automatic buildpack detection. It also supports custom Dockerfiles for any language or runtime. See the deploy tutorials for language-specific guides.
What happens when I exceed the Hobby tier limits?
The Hobby tier supports up to three application instances. If you need additional instances, additional compute resources, or access to managed databases at scale, you move to a paid plan with per-second billing and no monthly minimums. You can upgrade at any time from the console.
How does per-second billing work in practice?
Your application is billed for the exact number of seconds it runs multiplied by the per-second rate for your chosen instance type. An application running for 12 hours in a day is billed for 43,200 seconds of compute, not a full 24-hour day. This is particularly beneficial for development environments and applications with predictable traffic patterns.
Is there a comparison of pricing at scale?
For detailed pricing examples based on instance type and usage patterns, see the Out Plane pricing page. The pricing calculator allows you to model costs for your specific workload before committing.