Best Railway Alternatives in 2026: 9 Platforms Compared

Railway is, by most accounts, the best developer experience in the PaaS space. The visual canvas, instant deploys, Railpack auto-detection, 1,800+ templates. It earned 2M+ developers (per Railway's marketing) for a reason. But when you hit its limits — no BYOC below Enterprise, manual-only horizontal scaling, 4 regions — you start looking for alternatives. This guide covers 9 of them, with real pricing, real trade-offs, and no filler.

#TL;DR — Quick Picks

Based on our editorial analysis as of February 2026:

#Why Developers Look Beyond Railway

Railway raised a reported $100M in its Series B in January 2026, led by TQ Ventures (per TechCrunch). Two million developers, 100K paid users, and 10M+ monthly deployments (per Railway's marketing materials, February 2026). The DX is exceptional — Railway has, in our view, the strongest developer experience in PaaS as of February 2026.

But scale exposes gaps. Here is what drives the search for alternatives.

No BYOC Below Enterprise

Railway runs everything on Railway infrastructure. Your data, your compute, their cloud. BYOC is Enterprise-only, custom-priced, and not self-service. If compliance, data residency, or existing cloud commitments matter to you, this is a dealbreaker.

Manual Horizontal Scaling

Railway added horizontal replicas, but they are manual. You set a replica count. There is no automatic horizontal autoscaling based on CPU, memory, or request load. Third-party tools like Judoscale exist, but that is another dependency.

Only 4 Regions

US-West (California), US-East (Virginia), EU-West (Amsterdam), and Singapore. If you need Australia, South America, Africa, or more granular coverage in Asia, you are out of options.

Observability

Railway includes logs and built-in metrics. No APM. No distributed tracing. No alerting rules. For production workloads that need real observability, you will need to bolt on external tools.

Scale-to-Zero Constraints

Railway added scale-to-zero in late 2025. It works — services sleep after 10 minutes of no outbound traffic. But cold starts add latency, and Railway themselves recommend against it for production. For staging and dev environments, it saves money. For production, it is still not where Fly.io is.

Pricing Concerns After $100M Raise

Railway's current pricing ($20/vCPU/mo, $10/GB/mo) is competitive, but the $100M raise means growth pressure.

#AZIN — BYOC From Day One

AZIN is the best Railway alternative for teams that need infrastructure ownership — it deploys to your own GCP account via GKE Autopilot with the first cluster free (as of February 2026), giving you Railway-level developer experience without giving up cloud ownership. AWS and Azure BYOC are on the roadmap.

What Makes AZIN Different

Where Railway runs on Railway infrastructure and locks BYOC behind Enterprise pricing, AZIN makes BYOC the default. Every plan. Every user. Your code runs in your cloud account, on your VPC, with your existing credits and commitments.

Key Features

• GCP BYOC — Deploy to your own GCP account today; AWS and Azure on the roadmap
• Git-push deploys — Connect your repo and deploy on push
• Preview environments — Automatic environments for every PR
• Managed Kubernetes — Production-grade orchestration without the ops burden
• Horizontal autoscaling — Scale based on CPU, memory, or custom metrics
• Full observability — Built-in logs, metrics, and tracing
• Multi-region — Deploy to any region your cloud provider supports

Pricing

Platform fee plus your own cloud costs. No compute markup. You pay GCP directly at their rates.

Best For

Teams that want PaaS simplicity without giving up cloud ownership. Developers with existing cloud credits. Companies with compliance or data residency requirements.

Limitations

Requires a GCP account. AWS and Azure support is on the roadmap. No free-tier compute — you pay GCP directly. Template library is growing but not at Railway's 1,800+ yet.

Head to Head

AZIN vs Railway — Full Comparison

Feature-by-feature breakdown of pricing, regions, build systems, scaling, and developer experience.

#Render — The Modern Heroku Replacement

Render is the closest Railway alternative for teams that prioritize simplicity — it offers a clean, modern Heroku alternative with predictable pricing starting at $0/mo (Hobby tier), managed PostgreSQL, and SOC 2 Type II certification (as of February 2026).

Key Features

• Unified platform — Web services, background workers, cron jobs, Postgres, Redis
• Free tier — $0 Hobby plan with web services and Postgres (Postgres expires after 30 days on free)
• Auto-deploy from Git — GitHub and GitLab integration
• Preview environments — Automatic per-PR environments on Pro
• SOC 2 Type II + ISO 27001 — Compliance on Organization and Enterprise plans
• Per-second billing — No waste on Pro and above

Pricing

Compute is usage-based on top of the plan fee. A basic web service starts around $7/mo.

Best For

Solo developers and small teams who want a clean Heroku replacement. Projects that need Postgres without managing it. Teams that value simplicity over flexibility.

Limitations

No BYOC. Five regions (Oregon, Ohio, Frankfurt, Singapore, Sydney). No scale-to-zero on paid tiers. Free Postgres databases expire after 30 days. Limited autoscaling controls compared to Fly.io or AZIN. For a direct comparison, see Railway vs Render and AZIN vs Render.

#Fly.io — Global Edge With Scale-to-Zero

Fly.io is the best Railway alternative for globally distributed apps — it runs Firecracker micro-VMs across 18 regions (consolidated from 35+ in 2025) with built-in scale-to-zero, starting at ~$2/mo for a shared VM (as of February 2026).

Key Features

• 18 regions — Global coverage from North America to Asia-Pacific
• Firecracker micro-VMs — Fast boot times, low overhead
• Scale-to-zero — Machines stop automatically when idle, start on request
• Machines API — Programmatic control over VM lifecycle
• Anycast networking — Traffic routes to nearest region automatically
• Persistent volumes — Attach storage to VMs
• GPU support — Run ML inference at the edge

Pricing

Fly.io moved to pay-as-you-go in late 2024. No more Launch or Scale plans for new customers.

Free allowances include 3 shared VMs, 160GB outbound, and 3GB storage.

Best For

Apps that need global distribution. Real-time applications. Projects where cold-start latency is acceptable in exchange for zero idle cost. Developers comfortable with CLI-driven workflows.

Limitations

No BYOC — runs on Fly.io infrastructure. No preview environments. More operational knowledge needed than Railway or Render. The flyctl CLI is powerful but has a learning curve. No built-in CI/CD — bring your own. Networking and volume management require understanding Fly.io-specific concepts.

#Porter — True BYOC on Kubernetes

Porter is the best Railway alternative for teams that need BYOC with Kubernetes and compliance — it deploys to your own AWS, GCP, or Azure account via managed K8s clusters, with one-click SOC 2 and HIPAA on AWS (as of February 2026). The trade-off: ~$225/mo minimum on AWS for the underlying EKS cluster.

Key Features

• BYOC on Kubernetes — Provisions EKS, GKE, or AKS in your account
• One-click SOC 2 / HIPAA — Compliance add-ons on AWS
• Startup program — Discounts for early-stage companies
• GitHub CI/CD — Built-in deployment pipeline from GitHub
• Managed add-ons — Postgres, Redis, monitoring out of the box
• Preview environments — Automatic per-PR environments

Pricing

Porter charges a platform fee on top of your cloud costs.

The ~$225/mo minimum on AWS covers Porter's platform fee plus the baseline EKS infrastructure (control plane + minimum node group). GCP and Azure have similar baselines.

Best For

Teams that need BYOC and are comfortable with Kubernetes concepts. Companies that need SOC 2 or HIPAA compliance on their own AWS account. Startups who qualify for the startup program.

Limitations

GitHub-only CI/CD. No GitLab or Bitbucket support. Higher minimum cost than Railway or Render. Kubernetes complexity leaks through in edge cases. The abstraction works until it does not, and then you need to understand EKS/GKE/AKS.

#Flightcontrol — BYOC to AWS, No Markup

Flightcontrol is the best Railway alternative for AWS-only teams — it deploys to your own AWS account via ECS with a flat platform fee ($97/mo Starter, $397/mo Business as of February 2026), zero compute markup, and access to all 28 AWS regions.

Key Features

• AWS BYOC — Everything runs in your AWS account
• 28 AWS regions — Full AWS region coverage
• Flat fee — No per-compute markup, just platform fee + AWS costs
• Fargate + EC2 — Choose between serverless containers and VMs
• Preview environments — On Business plan and above
• S3 integration — Managed S3 buckets with cost budgets and alerts

Pricing

Additional services beyond the plan limit are billed per hour.

Best For

Teams all-in on AWS who want PaaS simplicity without leaving their account. Developers who want predictable platform costs separate from cloud costs. Projects that need 28 AWS regions.

Limitations

AWS only. No GCP. No Azure. Small team (about 6 people) — slower feature development. No managed databases — you use AWS RDS directly. Smaller community and fewer third-party integrations compared to Railway or Render.

#6. Vercel — The Frontend King

Vercel created Next.js and built the best frontend deployment platform. If your app is a Next.js frontend with API routes, Vercel is the natural choice. For full-stack backend workloads, it is not.

Key Features

• Next.js-native — First-class support for the framework they created
• Edge Runtime — Run code at the edge across 100+ locations
• Preview deployments — Automatic per-branch deployments
• Image optimization — Built-in image CDN
• Analytics — Web Vitals and audience insights
• AI SDK — Streaming, tool calling, and structured output for AI apps
• Serverless functions — Node.js, Go, Python, Ruby

Pricing

Per-seat pricing adds up. A team of 10 on Pro is $200/mo before usage.

Best For

Next.js applications. JAMstack sites. Frontend-heavy projects. Teams that prioritize deploy speed and edge performance for static and server-rendered content.

Limitations

No BYOC. Not designed for long-running processes. Serverless function timeouts (60-300s on Pro). Per-seat pricing scales poorly. AI and compute-heavy workloads can exceed included quotas quickly — developers report using 494 GB-hours in 12 days of testing. No managed databases (you need Vercel Postgres or external). No background workers or cron jobs natively.

#Heroku — The Original PaaS, Now in Maintenance Mode

Heroku is no longer a viable long-term choice for new projects. Salesforce froze all feature development on February 6, 2026, transitioning Heroku to "sustaining engineering" — security patches and stability fixes only. No new features, no new enterprise contracts for new customers.

Key Features

• Mature ecosystem — Huge add-on marketplace
• Simple deploys — Git push and buildpack detection
• Managed Postgres — Heroku Postgres is still solid
• Pipelines — Review apps and staging workflows
• Heroku Connect — Salesforce integration (the one thing that will keep getting investment)

Pricing

No free tier since November 2022.

Best For

Legacy apps that already run on Heroku and are not worth migrating. Teams deeply integrated with Salesforce. Projects where stability matters more than new features.

Limitations

In sustaining engineering mode as of February 2026 — security and stability patches only. No free tier. No BYOC. No autoscaling on Basic or Standard. No major infrastructure updates announced since the sustaining engineering transition. As of February 2026, Salesforce has not announced a timeline for new Heroku feature development beyond security and stability patches. For new projects requiring active platform development, consider the other alternatives on this list.

#8. Coolify — Open-Source, Self-Hosted, Free

Coolify is the self-hosted PaaS that lets you deploy to any server you own or rent. No platform fees. No vendor lock-in. 50,000+ GitHub stars (as of February 2026) and a passionate community.

Key Features

• Fully open-source — MIT-licensed, self-hosted on any Linux server
• 280+ templates — One-click deploys for Supabase, Plausible, n8n, and more
• Git integration — GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket, Gitea
• Auto SSL — Let's Encrypt certificates managed automatically
• Database management — Postgres, MySQL, MongoDB, Redis with automated backups
• S3 backups — Automatic backups to any S3-compatible storage
• Multi-server — Deploy across multiple servers from one dashboard
• Docker-based — Anything that runs in Docker runs on Coolify

Pricing

Free. You pay for your servers.

Coolify Cloud (managed) starts at $5/mo if you do not want to self-host.

Best For

Solo developers who want full control. Side projects and personal infrastructure. Teams who are comfortable managing their own servers. Anyone who wants zero platform fees.

Limitations

You manage the server. Updates, security patches, monitoring, backups — that is on you. Primarily maintained by one developer (Andras Bacsai). No enterprise support. No BYOC in the cloud platform sense — you are hosting directly on servers, not cloud provider accounts. The UX is good for self-hosted software but not at Railway's level.

#9. Northflank — Full-Featured Enterprise PaaS

Northflank is the most feature-complete PaaS on this list. CI/CD pipelines, per-second billing, GPU support, and BYOC on all plans. It targets teams that need everything in one platform.

Key Features

• Built-in CI/CD — Full pipelines, not just deploy-on-push
• Per-second billing — No wasted spend on idle time
• BYOC (all plans) — AWS, GCP, Azure, Oracle, Civo, CoreWeave. Free tier includes 1 BYOC cluster
• GPU support — Deploy GPU workloads alongside standard services
• Managed databases — Postgres, MongoDB, MySQL, Redis with automated backups
• Preview environments — Automatic per-PR environments
• Secrets management — Built-in secret inheritance and scoping
• Multi-cloud (Enterprise) — Deploy across providers

Pricing

BYOC is available on all plans, including the free Developer Sandbox (1 cluster). Paid plans add more clusters and features. Platform fee plus your own cloud costs with no compute markup.

Best For

Teams that need a full platform with built-in CI/CD. Enterprise companies that want BYOC with comprehensive features. GPU workloads alongside standard services. Teams that outgrew Railway's feature set.

Limitations

Enterprise-oriented pricing and UX. BYOC is available on all plans including the free Developer Sandbox, but the free tier is limited to 1 cluster. Community is smaller than Railway's or Render's. The learning curve is steeper due to the breadth of features. The dashboard can feel complex compared to Railway's visual canvas.

#Full Comparison Table (as of February 2026)

#Pricing Comparison (as of February 2026)

Estimated cost for a single web service with 1 vCPU, 1GB RAM, running 24/7:

#How to Choose

Choose Railway if...

You are a solo developer or small team that values DX above everything else. Railway's visual canvas, instant deploys, and template library are unmatched. If you do not need BYOC, autoscaling, or global reach, Railway is hard to beat.

Choose AZIN if...

You want Railway's simplicity but need to deploy to your own cloud. GCP BYOC today, with AWS and Azure on the roadmap. Horizontal autoscaling and full observability without giving up the PaaS experience. No enterprise gate for BYOC.

Choose Render if...

You want the simplest possible Heroku replacement. Render's free tier, clean UI, and unified platform (web + workers + cron + databases) make it the easiest migration from Heroku.

Choose Fly.io if...

Latency is your primary concern. 18 regions, Firecracker VMs, and scale-to-zero make Fly.io the best choice for globally distributed applications. Be ready for a steeper learning curve.

Choose Porter if...

You need BYOC on Kubernetes with compliance. One-click SOC 2 and HIPAA on AWS. The higher cost is justified if you need real Kubernetes control with a PaaS layer.

Choose Flightcontrol if...

You are AWS-only and want zero compute markup. 28 regions, flat platform fee, and full AWS ownership. Simple pricing model.

Choose Vercel if...

Your application is primarily a Next.js frontend. Vercel is not a general-purpose PaaS — it is the best frontend platform, and you should use it for that.

Choose Heroku if...

Your app already runs on Heroku and migration is not worth the effort. For new projects requiring active platform development, consider the other alternatives on this list.

Choose Coolify if...

You want full control with zero platform fees. Self-hosted, open-source, and capable — if you are comfortable managing servers.

Choose Northflank if...

You need a full-featured platform with built-in CI/CD, GPU support, and BYOC on all plans including the free tier. The broadest feature set in this list.