Fazlur Rahman
Quick Answer
Railway pricing in 2026 runs on per-second billing for CPU, memory, and disk with no idle markup. The Free plan is $0/month with $1 of included usage (1 vCPU / 0.5 GB max per service, 1 replica, 3-day log retention). The Free Trial gives $5 in credits for 30 days with no credit card required. Hobby is $5/month per workspace with $5 of included usage (48 vCPU / 48 GB max per service, 6 replicas, 7-day logs). Pro is $20/month per workspace with $20 of included usage (1,000 vCPU / 1 TB max per service, 42 replicas, 30-day logs, unlimited seats). Enterprise is custom with SSO, RBAC, HIPAA BAAs, dedicated VMs, and named support. Resource rates are memory $10/GB-month, CPU $20/vCPU-month, volumes $0.15/GB-month, egress $0.05/GB. Object storage is $0.015/GB-month with free egress, the cheapest of the major PaaS for asset and backup workloads.
Last verified: September 17, 2026. Pricing reflects the per-second billing model that Railway has used since 2023; per-second granularity and resource rates were unchanged in 2026, though the Sandbox tier was added in early 2026 (Railway docs, 2026).
- Free: $0/mo, $1 included usage, 1 vCPU / 0.5 GB per service, 1 replica, 3-day log retention, 1 project.
- Free Trial: $0 upfront, $5 credit for 30 days, no credit card, 2 vCPU / 1 GB max, 2 replicas, 7-day logs.
- Hobby: $5/mo, $5 included, 48 vCPU / 48 GB per service, 6 replicas, 7-day logs, 50 services.
- Pro: $20/mo, $20 included, 1,000 vCPU / 1 TB per service, 42 replicas, 30-day logs, 100 services, unlimited seats.
- Enterprise: custom, SSO, RBAC, HIPAA BAAs, dedicated VMs, support SLOs, annual committed spend unlocks all of the above.
- Resource rates: Memory $10/GB-mo, CPU $20/vCPU-mo, Volumes $0.15/GB-mo, Egress $0.05/GB, Object Storage $0.015/GB-mo (free egress).
- Sandbox rates: $50/GB-mo memory, $50/vCPU-mo CPU, billed on active use (not wall-clock); 50 concurrent on Hobby, 100 on Pro.
- Annual commit: longer log retention, SSO, RBAC, extended audit, HIPAA BAA (Enterprise), dedicated VMs (Enterprise).
Plan-by-plan breakdown
Railway sells five plans in 2026: Free Trial (one-time credit), Free (sustainable free tier), Hobby (indie/side project), Pro (production teams), and Enterprise (regulated workloads). The plan fee covers the workspace itself; resource usage is metered on top.
Free Trial is designed to let new users evaluate Railway without a credit card. You get $5 in credits that are valid for 30 days; if you upgrade to Hobby or Pro before they expire, the remaining credit carries over. After the trial credits are spent, the workspace falls back to the Free plan.
The Free plan is the sustainable zero-cost tier. It includes $1 of monthly usage, supports one project with up to 3 services, max 1 vCPU / 0.5 GB per service, 1 replica, 3-day log retention, and no custom domains or concurrent builds. It is suitable for hobby projects, demos, and low-traffic personal services.
Hobby at $5/month per workspace is the entry point for paid production use. $5 of monthly usage is included; if you exceed it, the overage is charged at the standard resource rates. Hobby supports up to 50 projects, 50 services, services up to 48 vCPU / 48 GB, 6 replicas per service, 5 GB max volume per service, 2 custom domains, and 7-day log retention. It allows up to 3 members per project.
Pro at $20/month per workspace targets production teams. $20 of monthly usage is included; overage is metered. Pro unlocks services up to 1,000 vCPU / 1 TB, up to 42 replicas per service, 30-day log retention, 100 projects, 100 services, unlimited members per project, 20 custom domains, 10 concurrent builds, and 1 TB max volume per service.
Enterprise is quote-based and unlocks the compliance and security features Pro cannot: SSO, RBAC, extended audit logs, HIPAA BAAs, dedicated VMs, and support SLOs. Enterprise contracts are typically structured as annual committed spend with volume discounts. Most mid-market Enterprise deals fall in the low-five-figures annually (Railway enterprise docs, September 2026).
| Plan | Workspace fee | Included usage | Max per service | Replicas | Logs |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free Trial | $0 (30 days) | $5 one-time credit | 2 vCPU / 1 GB | 2 | 7 days |
| Free | $0 | $1 / month | 1 vCPU / 0.5 GB | 1 | 3 days |
| Hobby | $5 | $5 / month | 48 vCPU / 48 GB | 6 | 7 days |
| Pro | $20 | $20 / month | 1,000 vCPU / 1 TB | 42 | 30 days |
| Enterprise | Custom | Custom | Custom | Custom | Custom |
Resource rates on Railway
Railway bills every resource by the second. The headline resource rates for 2026 are: memory at $0.00000386/GB-second (~$10/GB-month), CPU at $0.00000772/vCPU-second (~$20/vCPU-month), persistent volumes at $0.00000006/GB-second (~$0.15/GB-month), and egress at $0.05/GB for service-to-internet traffic. Object storage is the outlier at $0.015/GB-month with free egress, designed for ML model artifacts, static assets, and database backups.
There is no idle markup. If a service is scaled to 0 replicas, you do not pay for CPU or memory while it is idle. This is the single biggest cost advantage Railway has over Heroku, which bills dyno-hours regardless of utilization. For a typical Node or Python API averaging 10% CPU utilization, Railway ends up 60-70% cheaper than Heroku Standard dynos at the same memory tier (comparison, September 2026).
Hobby projects are billed at the end of each month for usage exceeding the $5 included allocation. Pro is billed for usage above $20. Enterprise customers negotiate inclusive monthly resource budgets as part of their annual contract.
Sandboxes and ephemeral compute on Railway
Railway Sandboxes launched in early 2026 as a way to run isolated, ephemeral Linux VMs for agents, builds, and untrusted code. They are billed on actual CPU use and memory held while running, not wall-clock uptime, which makes them cost-effective for bursty workloads like code interpreters, browser agents, and CI ephemeral environments.
Sandbox rates are higher than regular compute: $0.00001929/GB-second (~$50/GB-month) for memory and $0.00001929/vCPU-second (~$50/vCPU-month) for CPU. The 2.5x premium reflects isolation overhead (separate kernel namespaces, separate cgroups). Hobby allows 50 concurrent running sandboxes; Pro allows 100; Enterprise is custom. Each sandbox can run up to 8 vCPU / 8 GB on Pro (Railway docs, September 2026).
Sandboxes are the cheapest tier for short-lived, untrusted workloads among major PaaS as of mid-2026. AWS Lambda charges per GB-second with a 6 TB-second soft limit per month; Railway Sandboxes charge ~$50/GB-month for memory held during execution, with no per-month cap, and the same model for CPU. For typical agent workloads that hold 1-2 GB for a few minutes at a time, Railway is competitive with Lambda and significantly cheaper than EC2 dedicated instances.
How Railway compares to Render and Fly.io
Versus Render, Railway's per-second compute model is more transparent but the total bill for a typical workload is similar. Render Pro ($25/mo) + Standard compute ($25/mo) = $50/mo before egress vs Railway Pro ($20/mo) + average usage of $15-30/mo for comparable resources. Render wins on Postgres integration (managed Postgres is more mature on Render); Railway wins on the multi-service experience (Railway's dashboard and deployment ergonomics are widely considered the best in class for multi-service apps).
Versus Fly.io, Railway is simpler because you do not need to reason about region multipliers. Fly.io's region multiplier ranges from 1.000x (Virginia) to 1.615x (São Paulo) and 1.308x (Tokyo), which means a service running in APAC costs 27-30% more than the same service in Virginia. Railway's per-second compute is the same rate regardless of region, which simplifies budgeting. Fly.io offers 40% savings with reserved compute blocks (from $36/yr shared, $144/yr performance) for predictable workloads.
What enterprise buyers should do next
- Build a steady-state usage model (CPU-hours, GB-hours, egress GB per month) before choosing a plan. Hobby covers most side projects; Pro is the right entry for production teams; Enterprise unlocks HIPAA and SSO.
- If you have agent-style or ephemeral workloads, pilot Railway Sandboxes on Pro to compare cost and latency against AWS Lambda or EC2 dedicated instances; the per-second isolation billing is usually 30-50% cheaper.
- For compliance workloads (HIPAA, PCI, SOC 2 Type II), request an Enterprise quote with annual committed spend that includes a BAAs and dedicated VMs rather than scaling Pro linearly.
What to watch next
- Sandbox pricing in late 2026 will likely add reserved tiers (similar to Fly.io's reserved compute blocks) for high-volume agent fleets, given the 2.5x premium versus regular compute.
- Salesforce's Contentful acquisition (closed June 2026) is a leading indicator that headless-CMS integration with PaaS will become a bundled offering through 2027; Railway's existing Postgres + Next.js templates are well-positioned.
- Annual commitment discounts on Pro are not yet published in 2026; expect Railway to introduce a 10-15% annual prepay discount by Q4 2026 to compete with Heroku's enterprise prepay model.
