Both deploy code from a Git repository, and the pricing pages describe two different ways to pay for it.
TL;DR
Railway bills compute by the second under plan minimums: a free trial with $5 of credits then $1 a month, Hobby at $5 minimum usage including $5 of credits, Pro at $20 minimum including $20 of credits, with CPU at $0.00000772 per vCPU second and egress at $0.05 per GB. Vercel bills plans with metered add-ons: Hobby at $0, Pro at $20 a month including a $20 usage credit, Enterprise quoted, with firewall requests at $0.50 per million after the first million. Pick Railway for services, databases and agents that run continuously; pick Vercel for web apps that want a free tier, preview URLs and a global CDN.
Railway positions itself as an all-in-one cloud provider where a repo becomes a running service without writing configuration — the site describes a visual canvas for the whole stack and YAML as optional. The free tier is a 30-day trial with $5 of credits, after which it charges $1 a month for up to 1 vCPU, 0.5 GB of RAM per service, 0.5 GB of volume storage and community support. Hobby requires $5 of minimum usage and includes $5 of monthly usage credits with a 99.9% availability target and 7-day log history. Pro requires $20 of minimum usage, includes $20 of credits, and scales to 50 replicas at 48 vCPU and 48 GB per service. Usage is billed per second: CPU at $0.00000772 per vCPU second, memory at $0.00000386 per GB second, volumes at $0.00000006 per GB second, egress at $0.05 per GB and object storage at $0.015 per GB-month.
Vercel sells plans for web applications. Hobby at $0 includes automated builds, a global CDN, a web application firewall, DDoS mitigation and traffic and performance insights. Pro at $20 a month adds a $20 usage credit, a flat-rate CDN with traffic-spike protection, advanced spend management and free viewer seats. Enterprise is quoted with SCIM, managed firewall rulesets, multi-region failover and a 99.99% SLA. Beyond the credit, add-ons are itemised: firewall allowed requests at $0.50 per million after one million included, ISR reads at $0.40 per million after one million, bulk redirects at $50 a month per 25,000 and blob storage at $0.023 per GB after 1 GB. The platform also lists Fluid compute, serverless functions, preview URLs, sandboxed environments and a model gateway as product features.
| Feature | Railway | Vercel |
|---|---|---|
| Free tier | 30-day trial with $5 of credits, then $1 a month for 1 vCPU and 0.5 GB per service | Hobby at $0 with CDN, firewall, DDoS mitigation and traffic insights |
| Entry paid plan | Hobby: $5 minimum usage, includes $5 of monthly usage credits | Pro: $20 a month, includes a $20 usage credit |
| Mid tier | Pro: $20 minimum usage, includes $20 of credits, up to 50 replicas per service | Enterprise: quoted, with SCIM, managed rulesets and 99.99% SLA |
| Billing model | Per-second usage under a plan minimum | Plan price plus itemised per-feature overages |
| Metered rates | CPU $0.00000772 per vCPU second, memory $0.00000386 per GB second, egress $0.05 per GB | Firewall $0.50 per million requests after 1M, ISR reads $0.40 per million after 1M |
| Storage | Volumes at $0.00000006 per GB second; object storage $0.015 per GB-month | Blob storage $0.023 per GB after 1 GB included |
| Workload shape | Services, databases, cron, private networking, agent sandboxes | Web apps, serverless functions, preview URLs, edge delivery |
| Platform | Web dashboard with Git deploys; YAML optional | Web dashboard with Git deploys and per-deployment preview URLs |
| Offline mode | Not applicable: hosted cloud service | Not applicable: hosted cloud service |
| Availability terms | 99.9% availability target on Hobby | 99.99% SLA quoted on Enterprise |
Pick Railway if
Railway prices the box rather than the page: memory, CPU, volumes and egress are charged by the second, and the same canvas holds a database, a worker and an agent sandbox next to the app. Teams that outgrew serverless limits or want one place to see the whole stack tend to accept the meter in exchange.
Pick Vercel if
Vercel gives the Hobby plan away with CDN, firewall and DDoS mitigation included, then charges $20 for Pro with an equal usage credit on top. Teams shipping a website or a Next.js application usually prefer a plan table they can read once over a per-second meter they have to watch.
No independent reviews or user ratings were collected for Railway or Vercel on this page; the bullets are each vendor's own wording from railway.app/pricing and vercel.com/pricing, and every rate quoted here comes from those two pages.
Vercel's Hobby plan is $0 with no usage requirement, while Railway's trial tier runs on $5 of credits and then charges $1 a month. For a low-traffic site, Vercel therefore starts cheaper; Railway's $5 Hobby minimum becomes reasonable once a service runs continuously.
Railway bills per second under a plan minimum: CPU at $0.00000772 per vCPU second, memory at $0.00000386 per GB second, plus egress at $0.05 per GB. Vercel bills a plan price with itemised overages: $0.50 per million firewall requests after the first million, $0.40 per million ISR reads, $0.023 per GB of blob storage.
Railway places databases, private networking, cron jobs and agent sandboxes on the same canvas as the app, all metered by the second. Vercel's pricing page is organized around web requests, edge delivery and serverless functions rather than persistent services.
Railway's free tier is a 30-day trial with $5 of credits and then $1 a month for up to 1 vCPU, 0.5 GB of RAM and 0.5 GB of volume storage per service. Vercel's Hobby plan is $0 with automated builds, a global CDN, a web application firewall, DDoS mitigation and traffic insights.
Vercel's plan table and its per-feature rates — $0.50 per million firewall requests, $50 a month per 25,000 bulk redirects — can be estimated from traffic before deployment. Railway's minimums give a floor ($5 Hobby, $20 Pro) but the final number depends on per-second resource use, so usage dashboards matter more than the plan page.
Spot an outdated price or feature? Let us know and we'll verify it.