Railway pricing combines a monthly subscription with usage-based infrastructure billing. Every account needs an active subscription, and on paid plans that fee goes toward included monthly usage credits; resource consumption beyond those credits is billed separately.
Cost therefore depends on both plan choice and workload behavior. The subscription sets a fixed monthly floor, while metered charges for CPU, memory, storage, and egress accrue on top.
What it is and who it’s for
Railway is an app hosting platform with four plans in addition to a Trial: Free, Hobby, Pro, and Enterprise. The plan descriptions are segmented by customer type: Free is for running small apps, Hobby is for indie hackers and developers building personal projects, Pro is for professional developers and teams shipping to production, and Enterprise is for teams that need compliance, service-level commitments, and account management features.
Collaboration also changes by tier. Pro and Enterprise are designed for shared workspaces and allow members to be added, while the pricing page describes Hobby as a single developer workspace.
How it works
Railway bills by usage, by the second, so you pay for what a service actually consumes rather than for a fixed box size. The model has two layers. The subscription comes first — $0 on Free, $5 on Hobby, $20 on Pro, and custom on Enterprise — and that fee goes toward your usage costs rather than sitting beside them. Resource usage comes second: on Hobby and Pro the included credit ($5 and $20 respectively) resets every billing cycle and does not roll over, so usage within the credit costs only the subscription fee, and usage beyond it is charged as the difference on top.
The metered resources named in the official materials are RAM, CPU, network egress, and volume storage, and the pricing page adds object storage. Railway publishes these rates in two views: per-second on the pricing page, and monthly plus per-minute in the docs.
Pricing and cost considerations
Subscriptions and included credits by plan:
| Plan | Subscription | Included usage credit | Pricing model notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 / month | $1 of free credit per month | Positioned for getting started and small apps |
| Hobby | $5 / month | $5 of resource usage per month | If usage exceeds credit, the delta is charged |
| Pro | $20 / month | $20 of resource usage per month | If usage exceeds credit, the delta is charged |
| Enterprise | Custom | Not published | Custom pricing |
Per-unit rates for the metered resource categories, from the docs:
| Resource | Published rate |
|---|---|
| Memory | $10 / GB / month ($0.000231 / GB / minute) |
| CPU | $20 / vCPU / month ($0.000463 / vCPU / minute) |
| Network egress | $0.05 / GB |
| Volume storage | $0.15 / GB / month ($0.000003472222222 / GB / minute) |
The pricing page also lists object storage at $0.015 per GB-month and labels its egress as free.
Service limits also vary by plan. Free allows up to 1 vCPU and 0.5 GB RAM per service plus 0.5 GB volume storage. Hobby raises that to up to 48 vCPU and 48 GB RAM per service, up to 6 replicas, and up to 5 GB storage. Pro raises it further to up to 1,000 vCPU and 1 TB RAM per service, up to 42 replicas, and up to 1 TB storage.
Operational features also differ by plan. Hobby includes community support, a 99.9% availability target, 7-day log history, and global regions. Pro includes Railway Support, a 99.99% availability target, 30-day log history, concurrent global regions, and unlimited workspace seats. Enterprise adds 90-day log history, SSO, RBAC, HIPAA BAAs, 18-month audit log retention, support SLOs, and a 99.999% availability target.
How to choose
Free fits teams that want to test small apps under constrained service limits and a small monthly credit pool. It is the lowest-commitment entry point, but it is also the most restrictive in service size and storage.
Hobby is the first paid tier and sets a predictable minimum monthly commitment while keeping the model usage-based. The included monthly credit matches the subscription fee, so a project consuming no more than that amount incurs only the base subscription charge. This subscription-plus-usage structure is one of several approaches compared in our guide to SaaS pricing models.
Pro is the more practical evaluation point for production teams: Railway positions it for professional developers and teams shipping to production, and it adds unlimited workspace seats, Railway Support, a 99.99% availability target, and 30-day log history.
Enterprise targets procurement needs that extend beyond runtime capacity into governance and deployment model. It adds dedicated VMs, bring your own cloud, SSO, RBAC, and HIPAA BAAs.
Limitations and gotchas
One common misunderstanding is to treat Railway as purely pay-as-you-go hosting. The official docs say each Railway account needs an active subscription, so the pricing model is metered usage layered on top of a plan fee rather than usage charges alone.
The Trial has separate rules from the standard plans. New Trial accounts receive a one-time grant of $5, and Trial users cannot purchase credits without upgrading to Hobby.
Payment and shutdown behavior also matter for finance and operations teams. Railway says it requires a post-paid card as of March 30th, and if credits used as payment run out, the subscription is cancelled and workloads stop.
Storage persistence has plan implications as well. The docs state that volume data is deleted after a grace period if the user is no longer on a paid plan.
Teams trying to cap spend have built-in controls, but those controls can interrupt service. Usage Limits let users set a maximum spend for a billing cycle, and if resource usage exceeds the configured limit, Railway shuts down workloads to prevent further charges.
The cost-control tools are specific enough to matter in implementation. Users can set separate custom email alerts and hard limits for Compute Usage and Agent Usage, with reminders triggered at 75%, 90%, and 100% of the hard limit.
Railway also points to workload-level settings that can change the bill: replica limits can cap CPU and memory per replica, Private Networking can help avoid unnecessary network egress costs, and Serverless can stop inactive services to reduce cost.
FAQ
Can I upgrade or downgrade at any time?
Yes. Upgrades apply immediately, giving instant access to the new plan’s features and higher resource limits. Downgrades take effect at the beginning of the next billing cycle.
Why might I be charged partway through a billing cycle?
Railway’s automated billing can charge part of the bill earlier in the cycle. Railway says this keeps accounts in good standing and helps it mitigate risk and fraud.
How long is volume data kept after leaving a paid plan?
After sufficient warning, Railway deletes volume data on a plan-based timeline: 30 days after expiry on Free or Trial, 60 days after cancellation on Hobby, and 90 days after cancellation on Pro.
Can the Hobby subscription fee be waived?
Yes. Railway automatically waives it for a small set of active builders, assessed from factors like platform usage and GitHub activity. The process is fully automated, and Railway does not act on manual waiver requests.
How long are container images retained by plan?
Image retention is 24 hours on Free and Trial, 72 hours on Hobby, 120 hours on Pro, and 360 hours on Enterprise.
How do I bring workloads back after a usage hard limit stops them?
Raise or remove the usage limit, and Railway automatically redeploys the stopped services; you can redeploy manually if recovery fails. The minimum hard limit that can be set is $10.
