App hosting prices in 2026: Vercel, Netlify, Railway and Fly.io

1. The plans of four platforms#

Vercel, Netlify, Railway and Fly.io solve the same problem (putting your application into production) with different billing models. The table summarizes the free plan, the paid plan and how usage is billed, according to each one's official page read on October 17, 2026. Prices are in US dollars and exclude taxes.

There are three models. Vercel charges a plan with a usage credit and overages for transfer, requests and functions. Netlify charges in credits consumed by deploys, compute, bandwidth and requests. Railway and Fly.io charge for resources: memory, CPU, volumes and egress, per second or per machine.

Documentation: Vercel: pricing ↗ · Netlify: pricing ↗ · Railway: pricing ↗ · Fly.io: pricing ↗

2. The limit that surprises most: commercial use#

Vercel states that its Hobby plan is for personal, non-commercial use: a project that earns revenue needs the Pro plan ($20 a month). Fly.io has no free plan for new organizations, only a trial of 2 hours of runtime or 7 days. Railway offers a Free plan with $1 of usage a month and low limits (1 vCPU and 0.5 GB per service).

Netlify's and Railway's pages do not state, in what we verified, whether their free plan allows commercial use; confirm it in their terms of service before launching a product.

3. Three calculated cases#

The code calculates three cases with the published rates. For the two APIs it compares Railway Hobby ($5 fee that includes $5 of usage, plus usage above it) with a Fly.io shared-cpu-1x machine; the machines are not identical (Fly.io uses shared CPU), so it is a cost comparison, not a capacity one. The third case estimates how many Netlify credits a site with 100 GB of traffic consumes.

def railway_hobby(memory_gb, vcpu, volume_gb, egress_gb):
    usage = memory_gb * 10 + vcpu * 20 + volume_gb * 0.15 + egress_gb * 0.05   # USD a month
    return 5 + max(0, usage - 5)               # $5 fee that includes $5 of usage

FLY = {"256 MB": 2.19, "512 MB": 3.69, "1 GB": 6.70}   # shared-cpu-1x, iad region

def fly(preset, volume_gb, egress_gb):
    return FLY[preset] + volume_gb * 0.15 + egress_gb * 0.02   # North America and Europe egress

def netlify_credits(deploys, gb_hours, gb_bandwidth, requests_10k):
    return deploys * 15 + gb_hours * 10 + gb_bandwidth * 20 + requests_10k * 2

print(f"Always-on API: Railway Hobby {railway_hobby(0.5, 0.25, 1, 20):.2f} | Fly.io {fly('512 MB', 1, 20):.2f}")
print(f"Larger API: Railway Hobby {railway_hobby(1, 0.5, 5, 50):.2f} | Fly.io {fly('1 GB', 5, 50):.2f}")
usage = netlify_credits(20, 10, 100, 100)
plans = {"Free": 300, "Personal": 1000, "Pro": 3000}
minimum = next(name for name, cap in plans.items() if usage <= cap)
print(f"Site with 100 GB of traffic: {usage} credits | minimum plan {minimum}")

For the small API, Fly.io comes out cheaper ($4.24 versus $11.15) because it charges a fixed-size machine, whereas Railway charges the memory and CPU actually used. On the 100 GB traffic site, bandwidth dominates: 2,000 of the 2,600 credits, and only Netlify's Pro plan (3,000 credits) covers it. Vercel Pro would include that traffic, since its plan brings 1 TB of transfer.

4. Which to choose for your case#

There is no best platform overall; the table turns each case into a criterion.

Before deciding, estimate your monthly traffic, your deploys and whether your service must be always on. Those three facts order the options better than the front-page price.

Go deeperDeploy Your App Fast Without EC2, VPC or IAM: A PaaS Guide

5. What to watch on the bill#

All four platforms can surprise you if you set no limits.

• Vercel Pro includes 1 TB of transfer and then charges from $0.15 per GB: set spend alerts before a traffic spike.
• Netlify charges in credits: a site with lots of bandwidth burns credits faster than one with many deploys.
• Railway bills memory and CPU per second: a stopped service costs nothing, but one inflated by a bug does.
• Fly.io charges for volumes and egress: the cited rate ($0.02 per GB) is the North America and Europe one; check your region's.

Go deeperWhy SMBs Worry More About Cloud Cost Than Security

6. Keep your numbers current#

These platforms' plans change often. The figures are those on the official pages on October 17, 2026; confirm the conditions before committing to a budget.

• Note the date you read each rate.
• Set spend alerts on the platform you choose.
• Compare more deployment options in Codifly's cloud solutions comparator.