Quick Answer
Last verified:
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Railway costs Free to $20 per month as of April 2026, with 4 plans available including a free tier. Plans: Free at $1/month, Hobby at $5/month, and Pro at $20/month. Enterprise pricing is available on request. Pricing depends on your chosen tier, contract length, and negotiated discounts.

Use the interactive pricing calculator to estimate your exact cost based on team size and requirements.

  • Free tier: Yes

Railway offers 4 pricing tiers: Free, Hobby, Pro, Enterprise. A free plan is available. Paid plans include Free at $1/month, Hobby at $5/month, Pro at $20/seat/month. The Hobby plan is hobbyist developers building side projects.

Compared to other developer tools software, Railway is positioned at the budget-friendly price point.

  • 8 documented hidden costs beyond list price

How much does Railway cost?

Railway offers 4 pricing plans, starting with a free tier and scaling to custom enterprise pricing. Plans include Free (free), Hobby at $5/month, Pro at $20/month, Enterprise (custom pricing).

Railway Pricing Overview

Railway has 4 pricing plans, including a free tier. Paid plans range from $0 to $20/month. The Free plan is free and is best for getting started and deploying small apps on railway. The Hobby plan costs $5/month, best for hobbyist developers building side projects. The Pro plan costs $20/month, best for professional developers and teams shipping production applications. The Enterprise plan requires contacting sales for a custom quote and is designed for teams shipping at scale with compliance and support needs.

There are at least 8 documented hidden costs beyond Railway's list price, including implementation, training, and add-on fees.

This pricing was last verified in April 3, 2026 from 5 independent sources.

Railway is a cloud deployment platform designed for developers who want to ship applications without managing infrastructure. Railway pricing starts at $5/month for the Hobby plan, which includes $5 in monthly usage credits for compute, memory, storage, and egress.

Railway uses a two-component billing model: a flat monthly subscription fee plus usage-based charges. The Hobby plan ($5/month) suits solo developers, while the Pro plan ($20/month per seat) adds team collaboration, unlimited workspace seats, and priority support. Enterprise pricing starts at $2,000/month and includes dedicated infrastructure, SSO, audit logs, and HIPAA compliance options.

Usage is billed at $0.000463 per vCPU-minute for CPU, approximately $0.014/GB-hour for RAM, and $0.10/GB for network egress. Compute charges are metered per second, so idle services do not accumulate costs at the same rate as running ones.

All Railway Plans & Pricing

Plan Monthly Annual Best For
Free projects: 1servicesPerProject: 3 $1 /month Custom Getting started and deploying small apps on Railway
Hobby projects: 50servicesPerProject: 50 $5 /month Custom Hobbyist developers building side projects
Pro projects: 100servicesPerProject: 100 $20 /seat/month Custom Professional developers and teams shipping production applications
Enterprise vCPUPerService: 2400ramPerServiceTB: 2.4 Contact Sales Contact Sales Teams shipping at scale with compliance and support needs
View all features by plan

Free

  • 30-day free trial with $5 usage credits
  • $1/month after trial period
  • Up to 1 vCPU / 0.5 GB RAM per service
  • 0.5 GB volume storage
  • Up to 1 project (5 during trial)
  • Up to 3 services per project (5 during trial)
  • Community support
  • GitHub integration and automatic deployments

Hobby

  • $5 included monthly usage credits
  • Usage-based billing beyond included credits
  • Up to 48 vCPU / 48 GB RAM per service
  • Up to 5 replicas at 8 vCPU / 8 GB RAM per replica
  • Up to 5 GB volume storage
  • Up to 50 projects
  • Up to 50 services per project
  • Single developer workspace
  • Community support
  • 7-day log history
  • Global regions

Pro

  • $20 included monthly usage credits
  • Usage-based billing beyond included credits
  • Up to 1,000 vCPU / 1 TB RAM per service
  • Up to 42 replicas at 24 vCPU / 24 GB RAM per replica
  • Up to 1 TB volume storage
  • Up to 100 projects
  • Up to 100 services per project
  • Unlimited workspace seats included
  • Railway Support
  • 30-day log history
  • Concurrent global regions

Enterprise

  • Everything in Pro
  • Up to 2,400 vCPU / 2.4 TB RAM per service
  • Up to 50 replicas at 48 vCPU / 48 GB RAM per replica
  • Up to 5 TB volume storage
  • Unlimited projects and services
  • 90-day log history
  • 18-month audit log retention
  • Single Sign-On (SSO)
  • Role-Based Access Control (RBAC)
  • HIPAA BAAs
  • Support SLOs
  • Dedicated VMs
  • Bring Your Own Cloud (BYOC)

Railway Year 1 Total Cost by Company Size

Real deployment costs including licenses, implementation, training, and admin — not just the sticker price.

Personal Side Project $5 Year 1 total

Solo developer running a small web app with minimal traffic — 0.5 vCPU and 512 MB RAM, running ~200 hours/month

Small Production App $20 Year 1 total

Pro plan developer running a web service (1 vCPU, 1 GB RAM, 200 hours/month) plus a Postgres database — usage stays near the $20 credit

Startup Team (5 seats) $175 Year 1 total

5 Pro plan seats ($100/month) plus multiple services totaling 4 vCPU and 8 GB RAM running continuously, with ~50 GB egress/month

High-Traffic Production App $400 Year 1 total

Pro plan with multiple replicas (8 vCPU, 16 GB RAM), 250 GB persistent storage, and 500 GB/month egress

How Railway Pricing Compares

Software Starting Price Top Price
Railway Free $20/month
Amplitude Free $49/month
CircleCI Free $15/month
Docker $11/user/month $24/user/month
Fly.io Free $300/month
GitHub Free $21/user/month

8 Railway Hidden Costs Beyond the List Price

Beyond the listed price, Railway has at least 8 documented hidden costs that can significantly increase total cost of ownership.

Watch for 8 hidden costs
  • Compute (CPU): $0.000463 per vCPU-minute (~$0.028/vCPU-hour) billed per second
  • Memory (RAM): ~$0.014 per GB-hour billed per second
  • Storage: ~$0.25 per GB-month for persistent volumes
  • Network egress: $0.10 per GB of data leaving Railway to the internet
  • Pro plan is billed per seat — a 5-person team pays $100/month in subscription fees before any usage
  • Hobby plan $5 subscription fee is charged even if you use $0 in resources
  • Business Class Support is an add-on cost on Pro plan (included in Enterprise only)
  • Enterprise minimum commitment is $2,000/month regardless of actual usage
Tip

Ask your Railway sales rep about these costs upfront. Getting them in writing before signing can save you from surprise charges later.

Full hidden costs breakdown →

How to Negotiate Railway Pricing

Railway contracts are negotiable. These 2 tactics are sourced from real buyer experiences and procurement specialists.

Negotiation Playbook 2 tactics
Starter Plan is $5/month — Evaluate vs Usage-Based Costs high success

Railway charges $5/month for the Starter plan with $5 in usage credits included. Monitor your actual resource consumption for 30 days before upgrading — many small apps run entirely within the $5 credit allowance, making Railway effectively free.

Railway pricing page
Scale Plan at $20/month Includes $20 in Credits high success

Railway's $20 Scale plan includes $20 in usage credits and higher limits. If your usage exceeds $5/month in credits, upgrading to Scale is often cost-neutral (the extra $15 fee is offset by the additional $15 in credits). Calculate your true per-month cost before assuming Scale is more expensive.

Railway pricing documentation

Full negotiation guide →

Railway Pricing FAQ

01 How much does Railway cost?

Railway offers three paid plans. The Hobby plan costs $5/month and includes $5 in monthly usage credits. The Pro plan costs $20/month per seat and includes $20 in usage credits per seat. Enterprise starts at a $2,000/month minimum commitment with custom pricing. All plans use usage-based billing for compute, memory, storage, and network egress beyond the included credits.

02 Does Railway have a free plan?

Railway does not have a permanent free plan. New accounts get a Trial with a one-time $5 usage credit that expires in 30 days. After the trial, you must upgrade to the Hobby plan ($5/month) or Pro plan ($20/month per seat) to continue using the platform.

03 What are Railway's usage-based billing rates?

Railway charges $0.000463 per vCPU-minute (roughly $0.028/vCPU-hour) for CPU, approximately $0.014 per GB-hour for RAM, about $0.25 per GB-month for persistent storage, and $0.10 per GB for network egress. Billing is per-second, rounded up to the nearest minute. Included credits on each plan offset these charges each billing period.

04 What is included in Railway's $5 Hobby plan?

The Hobby plan costs $5/month and includes $5 in usage credits each month. If your total resource usage stays under $5, the subscription fee effectively covers all costs. Usage beyond $5 is billed at standard rates. The Hobby plan supports a single-developer workspace with up to 2 custom domains per service, private networking, and built-in database provisioning.

05 How does Railway pricing compare to Render and Fly.io?

Railway's Hobby plan at $5/month (with $5 usage included) is slightly cheaper than Render's $7/month starter for a single service. Fly.io also uses usage-based billing and is comparable in cost for similar workloads. Railway differentiates with its GitHub integration, automatic deployments, and built-in database provisioning. For teams, Railway's Pro plan at $20/seat/month competes directly with Render's Team plans.

06 Does Railway charge for database hosting?

Railway lets you provision databases (Postgres, MySQL, Redis, MongoDB) as services within your projects. Database compute and memory are billed at the same usage rates as application services ($0.000463/vCPU-minute, ~$0.014/GB-hour RAM). Persistent volume storage for database data costs approximately $0.25/GB-month. Pro plan users can self-serve storage up to 250 GB.

Is this pricing incorrect? — we'll verify and update it.