Both platforms host the code you push and both quote a $20 tier, but one bills a credit pool and the other bills CPU-seconds, so the same traffic produces two different invoices.
TL;DR
Netlify prices in credits: Free gives 300 a month, Personal is $9 for 1,000, and Pro is $20 with unlimited members and pools from 3,000 to 20,000 credits. Railway prices by the second: Free caps a service at 1 vCPU and 0.5 GB RAM, Hobby is $5 minimum usage including $5 of credits, and Pro is $20 minimum usage including $20, on metered CPU, memory, volumes and $0.05 per GB egress. Pick Netlify when deploys, bandwidth and requests drive the bill; pick Railway when CPU and memory seconds do.
Netlify sells the deploy pipeline with a credit allowance. Free is $0 forever with 300 credits a month covering unlimited deploy previews, custom domains with SSL, serverless functions, Netlify Database, blob storage and a global CDN. Personal is $9 a month for 1,000 credits, one member, smart secret detection and priority email support. Pro is $20 a month with unlimited members and a credit pool chosen from 3,000, 5,000, 10,000, 15,000 or 20,000 credits, adding private organization repos, shared environment variables and three-plus concurrent builds. Enterprise is quoted with a 99.99% SLA, SSO and SCIM.
Railway sells metered compute and states it only charges for what an app uses, by the second. The Free plan is $0 and holds a service to 1 vCPU and 0.5 GB RAM with 0.5 GB of volume storage; a 30-day trial hands new accounts $5 of credits that expire. Hobby carries a $5 minimum usage and includes $5 of credits, 48 vCPU and 48 GB RAM per service, up to 5 GB of storage and global regions. Pro carries a $20 minimum usage with $20 of credits, unlimited workspace seats, up to 1,000 vCPU and 1 TB RAM per service and 42 replicas. Rates are memory at $0.00000386 per GB-second, CPU at $0.00000772 per vCPU-second, volumes at $0.00000006 per GB-second and egress at $0.05 per GB. Enterprise is quoted, with commitments from $1,000 to $10,000 a month unlocking HIPAA, SSO and dedicated VMs.
| Feature | Netlify | Railway |
|---|---|---|
| Free tier | Free: $0 with 300 credits a month, deploy previews and custom domains with SSL | Free: $0, up to 1 vCPU and 0.5 GB RAM per service, 0.5 GB volume storage |
| Entry paid | Personal $9 a month: 1,000 credits, one member, secret detection | Hobby $5 minimum usage: includes $5 of usage credits each month |
| Team tier | Pro $20 a month with unlimited members; credit pools of 3,000 to 20,000 | Pro $20 minimum usage: includes $20 of credits and unlimited workspace seats |
| Billing model | Plan price plus credits: deploys, compute, bandwidth and requests draw down the pool | Usage-based by the second: CPU, memory, volume storage and egress all metered |
| Metered rates | Compute 10 credits per GB-hour; bandwidth 20 credits per GB; requests 2 per 10,000; deploys 15 credits each | CPU $0.00000772 per vCPU-second; memory $0.00000386 per GB-second; egress $0.05 per GB; volumes $0.00000006 per GB-second |
| Overages | Add-on credits at $5 per 500 or $10 per 1,500 through auto-recharge, off by default | Charged for resource usage above the included credits; Hobby bills total usage once $5 is passed |
| Top tier | Enterprise quoted: 99.99% SLA, SSO and SCIM, log drains, 24/7 support | Enterprise quoted; commitments from $1,000 (HIPAA) to $10,000 (dedicated VMs) unlock features |
| Team seats | Free 1 member, Personal 1 member, Pro unlimited members at $20 | Hobby single developer workspace; Pro includes unlimited workspace seats |
| Workload fit | Static sites, fullstack apps, serverless functions, database and blob storage | Long-running services, databases, cron jobs, replicas and sandboxes on VMs |
| Scaling | Global CDN; three-plus concurrent builds on Pro; 99.99% uptime SLA on Enterprise | Up to 48 vCPU and 48 GB RAM on Hobby; 1,000 vCPU, 1 TB RAM and 42 replicas on Pro |
Pick Netlify if
Personal at $9 and Pro at $20 with unlimited members price the team, while the credit meters price the work: 15 credits a deploy, 10 per GB-hour of compute and 20 per GB of bandwidth. A marketing site with steady traffic and few builds lands predictably, and the same plan carries functions, a database and previews.
Pick Railway if
A $5 Hobby minimum with $5 of credits, or $20 on Pro with $20 of credits and unlimited seats, meters CPU, memory, volumes and egress by the second. Services that idle, run cron jobs or scale replicas pay only for the seconds used, which suits databases and long-running backends more than static sites.
Vendor-published figures only: we collected no independent reviews, ratings or user quotations for Netlify or Railway in this run, so plan limits, credit rates and the savings quotes on Railway's page are the vendors' own claims. Prices were read from netlify.com/pricing and railway.com/pricing; both pages served dollar figures.
Neither wins in the abstract. Netlify charges a plan price from $9 for 1,000 credits; Railway charges usage from a $5 Hobby minimum that includes $5 of credits. Netlify's bill follows deploys, bandwidth and requests, while Railway's follows CPU-seconds, memory and egress.
In credits. A production deploy is 15 credits, compute is 10 credits per GB-hour, bandwidth 20 credits per GB and web requests 2 credits per 10,000. Free includes 300 credits a month, Personal 1,000 and Pro pools from 3,000 to 20,000.
By the second. Memory is $0.00000386 per GB-second, CPU $0.00000772 per vCPU-second, volumes $0.00000006 per GB-second and egress $0.05 per GB. Hobby includes $5 of monthly credits and Pro $20, resetting each billing cycle.
Yes. Netlify Free is $0 with 300 credits a month, and Railway Free is $0 with up to 1 vCPU and 0.5 GB RAM per service. Railway also gives new accounts a 30-day trial with $5 of credits; Netlify's Free plan has no expiry.
Netlify sells add-on credits at $5 per 500 or $10 per 1,500 through auto-recharge, which is off by default. Railway bills the extra resource usage, and on Hobby states that once monthly usage passes $5 the total usage is charged.
Netlify, on the published numbers. Its Free plan already carries custom domains with SSL, unlimited deploy previews and a global CDN, while Railway's Free plan gives no custom domains and lists global regions as trial-only.
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