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  2. Render vs Railway vs Fly.io for hosting a small backend

Render vs Railway vs Fly.io for hosting a small backend

Render's free tier is the only one that can run a small web service all month, but free services go to sleep after 15 minutes without traffic. For something that stays on, Fly.io's smallest machine is cheapest, Railway's Hobby plan starts at $5 of usage, and Render's smallest paid instance is $7.

Priced from vendor pages
Prices checked
20 Oct 2026
Exchange rate
1 USD = £0.7489
Sources
5
How we check

The answer

For an always-on service with 512 MB of memory, Fly.io works out at about £2.76 a month, Railway about £3.75 plus the CPU you use, and Render £5.24.

What does a small always-on backend cost to host?

Render

Hobby workspace $0 + compute: Free instance, or $7/mo for 0.5 CPU and 512 MB

  • Fixed prices per instance, and a free tier that suits demos.

Free web services spin down after 15 minutes without traffic and take about a minute to wake. Free Postgres databases expire 30 days after creation.

Free or trial Free (sleeps when idle)Cheapest always-on option £5.24Always on with 512 MB of memory £5.24

Railway

Free trial ($5 credit for 30 days), then Free plan $0/mo with $1 of usage credit, or Hobby: $5/mo minimum, including $5 of usage

  • Pay for what the service actually uses, billed by the second, with $5 of usage included on Hobby.

The bill follows real memory and CPU use, so it moves month to month. After the trial, the free plan allows 0.5 GB of memory per service and no custom domains.

Free or trial Free (trial, then Free plan £0.00 with $1 of usage a month)Cheapest always-on option £3.74 + usage over $5Always on with 512 MB of memory About £3.75 + CPU used

Fly.io

Pay as you go: shared-cpu-1x with 256 MB from $2.19/mo; extra memory $6 per GB a month

  • The cheapest always-on machine of the three, billed by the second while it runs.

No free allowance is listed. A dedicated IPv4 address ($2 a month), volumes and support plans cost extra.

Free or trial No free allowance listedCheapest always-on option £1.64Always on with 512 MB of memory About £2.76
Free or trialFree (sleeps when idle)
Free or trialFree (trial, then Free plan £0.00 with $1 of usage a month)
Free or trialNo free allowance listed
Cheapest always-on option£5.24
Cheapest always-on option£3.74 + usage over $5
Cheapest always-on option£1.64
Always on with 512 MB of memory£5.24
Always on with 512 MB of memoryAbout £3.75 + CPU used
Always on with 512 MB of memoryAbout £2.76

Monthly cost in pounds, from each vendor's pricing page. Lowest figures compared for the setups described.

How we worked it out

  • Render: the 0.5 CPU, 512 MB instance is $7 a month. $7 × 0.7489 = £5.24 (5.2423).
  • Railway Hobby: $5 minimum × 0.7489 = £3.74 (3.7445), which includes $5 of usage. Memory is $0.00000386 per GB per second, so 512 MB used all month (30 days) is 0.5 × $0.00000386 × 2,592,000 = $5.00. That uses the whole credit, so CPU time is added on top. $5.00256 × 0.7489 = about £3.75.
  • Railway Free plan after the 30-day trial: $0 a month. The $1 is included usage credit (worth about £0.75 of usage at 0.7489), not a fee.
  • Fly.io: shared-cpu-1x with 256 MB is $2.19 for a full month (£1.64). Adding 256 MB at $6 per GB a month is $1.50, so 512 MB is about $3.69 × 0.7489 = £2.76 (2.7634). Fly's calculator gives exact preset prices. These are Ashburn (US East) prices; in London (lhr) they are about 1.135 times higher, so 512 MB is about $4.19 (£3.14).
  • Excludes VAT, bandwidth (egress), databases, storage volumes and support plans.

Sources