Our take
Pick Dokploy if small teams who will run the free self-host installer on a 2 GB VPS, or start the 7-day Cloud trial and land on Hobby at $4.50/server/month (Yearly toggle) for one user and two environments when they want git → Deploy without a $15+ Startup seat. Pick Railway if app teams who will stay on Free $0 during the 30-day $5-credit trial (then $1/month, 1 project, 3 services) while they ship a first GitHub
usage-metered deploy desk
Best for
Dokploy Apps you start at $4.50 Cloud or OSS $0
Railway A service you start at $0 / $1
Free plan
Dokploy $0 · gitHub README: “free, self-hostable Platform as a Service.” curl -sSL https://dokploy.com/install.sh | bash on your VPS (installation). You pay the VPS, not Dokploy
Railway No free plan
Lowest paid
Dokploy Startup (Cloud) $15/mo
Railway Usage (services) $0.00000386
Next step up
Dokploy
Railway Sandboxes $0.00001929
Coding agent
Dokploy
Railway Sandboxes
Runs where
Dokploy Local; you host it
Railway Local; you host it
Watch out
Dokploy $4.50 is per Cloud server on the Yearly toggle
Railway Free becomes $1/month after the 30-day $5-credit trial
Last checked
Dokploy 2026-10-22 · dokploy.com/pricing
Railway 2026-10-22 · railway.com/pricing
small teams who will run the free self-host installer on a 2 GB VPS, or start the 7-day Cloud trial and land on Hobby at $4.50/server/month (Yearly toggle) for one user and two environments when they want git → Deploy without a $15+ Startup seat.
Read the Dokploy pageapp teams who will stay on Free $0 during the 30-day $5-credit trial (then $1/month, 1 project, 3 services) while they ship a first GitHub service, then land on Hobby at $5 minimum / month when they need 50 projects and 48 vCPU — or Pro at $20 minimum when they need 100 projects and 30-day logs.
Read the Railway page