Compare / Fly.io Machines vs AWS Lightsail
Fly.io Machines vs AWS Lightsail
Pre-calculated from hand-checked data — Fly.io checked 2026-08-06, AWS Lightsail checked 2026-08-06.
The short version
Fly.io Machines and AWS Lightsail split our comparison — the right pick depends on what your project values.
Price Fly.io Machines
Fly.io Machines is cheaper at every stage we model — about $12/mo even for a growing project.
Ease Tie
Both take similar effort to get a first deploy live.
Control AWS Lightsail
AWS Lightsail gives you more control over the stack — the flip side of the convenience trade.
Free tier AWS Lightsail
AWS Lightsail has a free tier; Fly.io Machines doesn't.
Features Fly.io Machines
Fly.io Machines comes out ahead on 5 of the 15 features we track, versus 3.
What developers say about this matchup
We couldn't find a substantive first-person discussion comparing this exact pair. We leave the section empty instead of filling it with vendor marketing or generic SEO comparisons.
At a glance
| Fly.io Machines | AWS Lightsail | |
|---|---|---|
| Best for | Dockerized apps that want low cost, fine control, or multi-region placement. | Projects that want predictable AWS — a fixed-price server with a clear upgrade path into the wider AWS ecosystem. |
| How deploys work | fly launch builds the image and deploys it; configuration lives in fly.toml and the flyctl CLI. | Pick a blueprint (WordPress, LAMP, Node.js, plain Linux), get SSH in the browser or your terminal, and manage it like any VPS. |
| The tradeoff | You operate more of the stack yourself — especially the database. | Costs more per spec than the European VPS crowd, and stopped instances keep billing. |
| Free tier | None | 90-day free trial (750 hours/month) on the $5–$12 Linux bundles and the $15 database, plus $100–$200 in new-account AWS credits. |
What you'd realistically pay
Fly.io Machines AWS Lightsail
| Project stage | Fly.io Machines | AWS Lightsail | Cheaper |
|---|---|---|---|
| Just starting | ≈$3/mo shared-cpu-1x, 256 MB — About $2.02/month in Amsterdam if always on; less with scale-to-zero. | ≈$5/mo Nano — 2 vCPU, 512 MB RAM, 20 GB SSD, 1 TB transfer. $3.50 as IPv6-only. Free for the first 90 days. | Fly.io Machines |
| Steady traffic | ≈$6/mo shared-cpu-1x, 1 GB — About $5.92/month in Amsterdam, plus egress at $0.02/GB. | ≈$12/mo Small — 2 vCPU, 2 GB RAM, 60 GB SSD, 3 TB transfer. | Fly.io Machines |
| Growing | ≈$12/mo Two 1 GB Machines — Two machines for availability; databases and egress on top. | ≈$39/mo Medium + managed database — $24 Medium (4 GB RAM, 4 TB transfer) plus the $15 managed MySQL/PostgreSQL bundle. | Fly.io Machines |
Fly.io Machines pricing notes
- Billed per second only while Machines are started; scale-to-zero is natively supported.
- Egress: $0.02/GB in North America and Europe; more elsewhere.
AWS Lightsail pricing notes
- Billed hourly up to the monthly cap — partial months cost less, but stopped instances still bill.
- IPv6-only bundles are 20–30% cheaper; an unattached static IPv4 costs ~$3.60/month.
- Bundles scale up to 64 vCPU / 256 GB RAM ($1,764/month), with compute- and memory-optimized variants.
Our ratings
Ease of use
Pricing clarity AWS Lightsail
Free tier AWS Lightsail
Scaling Fly.io Machines
Control AWS Lightsail
Feature by feature
Fly.io Machines wins 5, AWS Lightsail wins 3, with 7 even.
Deploy workflow
| Fly.io Machines | AWS Lightsail | |
|---|---|---|
| Deploy from Git push | Partial No native git integration; the documented path is flyctl in GitHub Actions. | No No deploy pipeline — bring your own CI or scripts. |
| Preview deploys | Partial PR apps work via the official GitHub Action, not out of the box. | No Nothing built in. |
| Official CLI | Yes flyctl does everything: launch, deploy, scale, ssh, logs. | Yes The AWS CLI covers Lightsail end to end. |
| Instant rollbacks | Partial Redeploy any previous image; no one-click dashboard rollback. | Partial Snapshots restore machines ($0.05/GB-month); no deploy-level rollback. |
Platform
| Fly.io Machines | AWS Lightsail | |
|---|---|---|
| Custom domains + HTTPS | Yes Custom domains with free managed certificates. | Yes Lightsail DNS zones are included; TLS is yours via certbot or a Lightsail distribution. |
| Built-in CDN / edge network | Partial Anycast routing sends users to the nearest region, but there is no static-asset CDN. | Yes Lightsail distributions add a CloudFront-backed CDN from $2.50/month (first year of 50 GB/month free). |
| Serverless functions | No Machines are micro-VMs, not functions. | No Not in Lightsail — that is the wider AWS (Lambda), with the à la carte billing this product avoids. |
| Docker containers | Yes A Docker image is the deployment unit. | Yes Install Docker on any instance, or use the Lightsail container service from $7/month. |
| SSH / shell access | Yes fly ssh console opens a shell in any running Machine. | Yes Full root SSH, including a browser-based terminal. |
| EU hosting region | Yes Amsterdam, Paris, Frankfurt, London, and more. | Yes Frankfurt, Ireland, London, Paris, Stockholm, and Spain. |
Runtime & operations
| Fly.io Machines | AWS Lightsail | |
|---|---|---|
| Automatic scaling | Yes Machines autostart and autostop with traffic; scale counts per region. | No No autoscaling — resize by restoring a snapshot to a bigger bundle. |
| Scale to zero | Yes Stopped Machines cost only their storage. | No Stopped instances bill at full rate; only deletion stops charges. |
| Scheduled jobs | Partial Scheduled Machines run on fixed intervals; full cron needs a workaround. | Yes Classic cron on the box. |
| Managed database | Partial Fly Postgres is automated-but-unmanaged; managed options come from partners like Supabase and Upstash. | Yes Managed MySQL/PostgreSQL bundles from $15/month. |
| Logs & metrics built in | Yes Built-in metrics (Grafana), live logs, and log shipping. | Partial Instance metrics and alarms in the console; deeper monitoring means CloudWatch or your own stack. |
Watch out for
Fly.io
- New pay-as-you-go organizations get no free allowance.
- Fly Postgres is explicitly unmanaged: automated but not a managed database service — backups and failover are your responsibility.
- Per-second compute plus $0.02/GB egress makes bills variable; prices differ by region.
AWS Lightsail
- Stopped instances bill at the full rate — only deleting an instance (snapshot first, $0.05/GB-month) stops charges.
- Transfer overage costs $0.09/GB in US/EU regions, and some regions (Mumbai, Sydney, São Paulo…) include only half the listed allowance.
- The new-account AWS Free plan expires after 6 months or when credits run out, then the account auto-closes with a 90-day grace period.
- Outgrowing Lightsail means migrating to EC2 — a real project, not a plan toggle.
Read the full reviews: Fly.io and AWS Lightsail. Or answer four questions to see what fits your project.