Compare Railway and Render free tiers side by side. Pricing, limits, change history, and risk assessment for developers.

Railway vs Render

Side-by-side free tier comparison. Data verified through 2026-08-17.

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Verdict

Both Railway and Render offer free tiers. Railway provides "Free" while Render offers "Hobby".

Railway caution discovered 2026-09-03 reduced

CategoryCloud Hosting
TierFree
Verified2026-08-17
Changes2 recorded
Superseded: As of 2026-09-03, railway.com/pricing reads: Free $0 per month. Start with a 30-day free trial with $5 credits, then $1 per month. Up to 1 vCPU / 0.5 GB RAM per service. 0.5 GB of volume storage. 2 replicas during the free trial, then 1. Projects: 5 during trial, then 1. We are not publishing our stored Railway terms beside it — our own pricing change record, discovered 2026-09-03, names them as the previous ones. Read what we recorded ↓
🔗 Referral link: $20 in Railway credits (disclosure)

Render caution discovered 2026-09-02 restructured

CategoryCloud Hosting
TierHobby
Verified2026-08-15
Changes2 recorded
Free web services (512 MB RAM, less than 1 CPU), free PostgreSQL (256 MB RAM, 30-day expiry), free Redis (25 MB). 5 GB bandwidth/month included then $0.15/GB, 500 build minutes/month. Up to 25 services, 2 environments per project. Auto-deploy from Git

Pricing Change History

Railway

reduced discovered 2026-09-03 · effective date unknown medium impact
The free tier now has a $1/month minimum after the trial, and the number of projects is reduced to 1 after the trial. The free trial now offers 2 replicas instead of 1.
Source ↗
increased effective 2025-10-01 medium impact
Railway expanded free tier following $100M Series B. Trial plan now includes $5 in free credits/month, sufficient for small hobby projects. Removed credit card requirement for trial
Source ↗

Render

restructured discovered 2026-09-02 · effective date unknown high impact
The free tier now includes compute options with varying RAM and CPU, and the limits for PostgreSQL and Key Value stores have been updated. Bandwidth for the Hobby tier is now 5GB included per month, then $0.15 per GB.
Source ↗
reduced effective 2025-09-01 low impact
Free web services now spin down after 15 minutes of inactivity (previously 30 minutes). Cold starts take 30-60 seconds. Free tier remains but with faster sleep times
Source ↗

Watch Both Vendors for Pricing Changes

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