Railway gives new accounts a $5 one-time signup credit rather than an ongoing free tier. The free plan includes access to a 30-day free trial with $5 credits, then $1 per month, up to 1 vCPU and 0.5 GB RAM per service, and 0.5 GB of volume storage. No credit card is required to sign up.
About
Railway is an all-in-one cloud platform for deploying, networking, scaling, monitoring, and evolving applications from a connected repository or local project. It supports GitHub repo deployment, Docker image deployment, local repo deployment with the Railway CLI, custom Dockerfiles, preview environments, one-click rollbacks, and built-in service variables and secrets management.
The hosted plan includes concrete resource limits and usage-based billing. The free offering is a 30-day trial with $5 in credits, then $1 per month, with up to 1 vCPU and 0.5 GB RAM per service, 0.5 GB volume storage, 5 projects during trial then 1, 5 services per project during trial then 3, 2 replicas during the trial then 1, and 7 days of log history during trial then 3 days. It is aimed at developers and teams that want managed deployment, private networking, observability, and scaling without operating separate tools for each layer.
- GitHub, Docker, and CLI deployments
- 30-day trial with $5 credits
- 1 vCPU and 0.5 GB RAM free limit
- 0.5 GB volume storage
- Private networking and public endpoints
- Logs, metrics, and alerts
- Preview environments and rollbacks
- 7-day trial log retention
Free Tier Value
This free tier is a 30-day trial with a one-time $5 credit, so its recurring monthly value is not a true ongoing allowance. It also has no credit card requirement, which lowers friction, but the offer is time-limited and capped, so the practical value is closer to a small starter trial than a permanent free plan.
What's included in the free tier
Verified
- Access to a 30-day free trial with $5 credits, then $1 per month.
- Up to 1 vCPU and 0.5 GB RAM per service.
- 0.5 GB of volume storage.
- Community support.
See Railway pricing for current limits.
Paid plans
Hobby
- usage credits
- $5/month
- vCPU per service
- 48
- RAM per service
- 48 GB
- replicas per service
- 5
- storage
- 5 GB
- Includes $5 of monthly usage credits
- After credits are used, charged for extra resource usage
- Up to 48 vCPU / 48 GB RAM per service
- Up to 5 replicas
- Up to 5 GB storage
- Single developer workspace
- Community support
- 99.9% availability target
Pro
- usage credits
- $20/month
- vCPU per service
- 1,000
- RAM per service
- 1 TB
- replicas per service
- 42
- storage
- 1 TB
- Includes $20 of monthly usage credits
- After credits are used, charged for extra resource usage
- Up to 1,000 vCPU / 1 TB RAM per service
- Up to 42 replicas
- Up to 1 TB storage
- Unlimited workspace seats included
- Railway Support
- 99.99% availability target
Enterprise
- vCPU per service
- Up to 2,400
- RAM per service
- Up to 2.4 TB
- replicas per service
- Up to 50
- 90-day log history
- Single Sign-On
- 18-month audit log retention
- Role-Based Access Control
- HIPAA BAAs
- Support SLOs
- 99.999% availability target
- Dedicated VMs
Pricing extracted from Railway's pricing page. Always verify current pricing before committing.
Common questions
Is Railway free forever?
No. Railway gives new accounts a one-time signup credit of about $5.00, spent at normal usage rates, then the account moves to pay-as-you-go.
Does Railway require a credit card?
No. You can start on Railway's free tier without entering card details.
What happens when you exceed Railway's free tier?
Once the signup credit runs out the account moves to pay-as-you-go pricing. Railway's cheapest published paid plan is Hobby at $5 / month.
What is Railway's free tier worth?
Railway's free tier is worth about $5.00 in signup credit. That maps to an FTV score of 36/100. The FTV score is explained at freetier.co/ftv.
