Comparing prices across every provider we track...
CloudHosting.ioCloudHosting.io
Railway Plans · $0/mo (512 MB RAM, 1 vCPU, 0 GB SSD)
Railway's free tier has zero included usage credit and bills metered consumption immediately, making it risky for any real workload. DigitalOcean App Platform at $5/mo offers the same specs with 50GB transfer included and a stronger 99.99% SLA, making it the clear winner for minimal spend. Heroku Eco at $5/mo is also cheaper but restricted to personal accounts only.
Same 512MB RAM and 1 vCPU as Railway free, but includes 50GB monthly transfer and guarantees 99.99% SLA with no surprise metered billing.
Caveat: Bandwidth overages charged at $0.01/GB, so heavy egress traffic can still add cost, but the 50GB cushion is substantial.
| Provider | Plan | Price | Specs | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| DigitalOcean | App Platform · Shared 512MB (fixed) | $5/mo | 512 MB RAM, 1 vCPU | Visit |
| Heroku | Dynos · Eco | $5/mo | 512 MB RAM | Visit |
| AWS Lightsail | Containers · Nano | $7/mo | 512 MB RAM, 1 vCPU | Visit |
Matches DigitalOcean's $5/mo price with 512MB RAM and includes 1000 shared compute hours per account.
Caveat: Eco dynos are personal-account only and unavailable for teams or Enterprise; apps sleep after 30 min inactivity, unsuitable for production APIs.
Slightly higher at $7/mo but includes 500GB data transfer (vs Railway's pay-per-GB at $0.05/GB) and offers 99.9% SLA.
Caveat: Data transfer overage rates vary by region ($0.09-$0.132/GB); Windows containers cost 70-90% more; shared 0.25 vCPU may be slower than Railway's 1 vCPU.
Also $7/mo with 512MB RAM, 99.95% SLA, and second-level billing transparency; no surprise metered CPU/RAM charges like Railway.
Caveat: Persistent disk storage, bandwidth overages, and custom domains all billed separately; exact bandwidth overage rate not published; instances billed by the second even when suspended.
Before you switch
| Render | Web Services · Starter | $7/mo | 512 MB RAM, 1 vCPU | Visit |
| Render | Background Workers · Starter | $7/mo | 512 MB RAM, 1 vCPU | Visit |
| Render | Private Services · Starter | $7/mo | 512 MB RAM, 1 vCPU | Visit |
DigitalOcean
Heroku
View Railway's plan
AWS Lightsail
Render