Our take
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 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. Pick Render if teams who will stay on Hobby at $0 / month + the free 512 MB web service while they deploy
usage-metered deploy desk
Best for
Railway A service you start at $0 / $1
Render Web services and a Postgres you start at $0
Free plan
Railway No free plan
Render $0 · / month + compute. Deploy up to 25 services. 5 GB bandwidth. Single-service previews
Lowest paid
Railway Usage (services) $0.00000386
Render Pro $25
Next step up
Railway Sandboxes $0.00001929
Render Scale $499
Coding agent
Railway Sandboxes
Render
Runs where
Railway Local; you host it
Render Hosted
Watch out
Railway Free becomes $1/month after the 30-day $5-credit trial
Render Hobby $0 is the workspace tile, not unlimited RAM
Last checked
Railway 2026-10-22 · railway.com/pricing
Render 2026-10-23 · render.com/pricing
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 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 pageteams who will stay on Hobby at $0 / month + the free 512 MB web service while they deploy a first project, then buy Pro at $25 / month when they need unlimited seats and full-stack previews.
Read the Render page