Compare / Netlify vs Fly.io Machines

Netlify vs Fly.io Machines

Pre-calculated from hand-checked data — Netlify checked 2026-09-15, Fly.io checked 2026-09-15.

The short version

Netlify wins more of our comparison points, but Fly.io Machines still fits if dockerized apps that want low cost, fine control, or multi-region placement describes you.

Price Tie

Netlify costs less while you're starting out, but Fly.io Machines works out cheaper once traffic grows.

Ease Netlify

Netlify is easier to get running: connect the Git repo; pushes build and deploy automatically with previews for every pull request.

Control Fly.io Machines

Fly.io Machines gives you more control over the stack — the flip side of the convenience trade.

Free tier Netlify

Netlify has a free tier; Fly.io Machines doesn't.

Features Netlify

Netlify comes out ahead on 6 of the 15 features we track, versus 4.

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

Netlify Fly.io Machines
Best for Static sites and frontend apps that deploy from Git and want a generous, mature workflow. Dockerized apps that want low cost, fine control, or multi-region placement.
How deploys work Connect the Git repo; pushes build and deploy automatically with previews for every pull request. fly launch builds the image and deploys it; configuration lives in fly.toml and the flyctl CLI.
The tradeoff The credit system makes bills hard to predict — traffic, deploys, and compute all drain one pool. You operate more of the stack yourself unless you pay for Managed Postgres.
Free tier Free: 300 credits per month with a hard stop. Commercial use is allowed; enough for a small site with modest traffic and few production deploys. None

What you'd realistically pay

Free $3 $9 $6 $20 $12 Just starting Steady traffic Growing
Netlify Fly.io Machines
Estimated monthly cost at each project stage. Estimates use each provider's real plans; euro prices are compared at a rough exchange rate.
Project stage Netlify Fly.io Machines Cheaper
Just starting Free Free — Watch the credit math: deploys cost 15 credits each out of 300. ≈$3/mo shared-cpu-1x, 256 MB — About $2.02/month in Amsterdam if always on; less with scale-to-zero. Netlify
Steady traffic ≈$9/mo Personal — 1,000 credits/month; extra 500-credit packs cost $5. ≈$6/mo shared-cpu-1x, 1 GB — About $5.92/month in Amsterdam, plus egress at $0.02/GB. Fly.io Machines
Growing ≈$20/mo Pro — 3,000 credits/month; extra 1,500-credit packs cost $10. ≈$12/mo Two 1 GB Machines — Two machines for availability; databases and egress on top. Fly.io Machines

Netlify pricing notes

  • Credit rates: 10,000 requests = 2 credits, 1 GB bandwidth = 20 credits, production deploy = 15 credits, 1 GB-hour of function compute = 10 credits.
  • Deploy previews and branch deploys are free; only production deploys cost credits.
  • Pro tiers: $20 for 3,000 credits without rollover; $33 for 5,000, $63 for 10,000, $95 for 15,000, or $126 for 20,000 with one-cycle rollover.

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.
  • Managed Postgres (MPG): Basic $38, Starter $72, Launch $282, Scale $962, Performance $1,922 per month, plus $0.28/GB-month storage. Every plan includes HA, backups, failover, and pooling.

Our ratings

Ease of use Netlify

Netlify 5/5
Fly.io Machines 3/5

Pricing clarity Fly.io Machines

Netlify 2/5
Fly.io Machines 3/5

Free tier Netlify

Netlify 3/5
Fly.io Machines 1/5

Scaling

Netlify 4/5
Fly.io Machines 4/5

Control Fly.io Machines

Netlify 2/5
Fly.io Machines 4/5

Feature by feature

Netlify wins 6, Fly.io Machines wins 4, with 5 even.

Deploy workflow

Netlify Fly.io Machines
Deploy from Git push Yes Connect GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket, or Azure DevOps; pushes deploy. Partial No native git integration; the documented path is flyctl in GitHub Actions.
Preview deploys Yes Deploy previews per pull request and branch deploys, free of credit cost. Partial PR apps work via the official GitHub Action, not out of the box.
Official CLI Yes The netlify CLI runs local dev, deploys, and manages functions. Yes flyctl does everything: launch, deploy, scale, ssh, logs.
Instant rollbacks Yes Every deploy is kept; publish any previous one instantly. Partial Redeploy any previous image; no one-click dashboard rollback.

Platform

Netlify Fly.io Machines
Custom domains + HTTPS Yes Custom domains with automatic TLS on all plans, including Free. Yes Custom domains with free managed certificates.
Built-in CDN / edge network Yes Global edge CDN serves all sites by default. Partial Anycast routing sends users to the nearest region, but there is no static-asset CDN.
Serverless functions Yes Netlify Functions (AWS Lambda under the hood) plus edge functions. No Machines are micro-VMs, not functions.
Docker containers No No container deploys — builds run in Netlify’s build image. Yes A Docker image is the deployment unit.
SSH / shell access No No shell access; logs are the debugging surface. Yes fly ssh console opens a shell in any running Machine.
EU hosting region Partial The CDN is global, but functions default to a US region; region choice needs higher tiers. Yes Amsterdam, Paris, Frankfurt, London, and more.

Runtime & operations

Netlify Fly.io Machines
Automatic scaling Yes CDN and functions scale automatically with traffic. Yes Machines autostart and autostop with traffic; scale counts per region.
Scale to zero Yes Nothing runs (or bills) while the site has no traffic — apart from credits. Yes Stopped Machines cost only their storage.
Scheduled jobs Yes Scheduled functions run on a cron expression. Partial Scheduled Machines run on fixed intervals; full cron needs a workaround.
Managed database Yes Netlify Database is managed Postgres. Its compute and bandwidth consume regular Netlify credits. Yes Managed Postgres (MPG) includes HA, backups, failover, and pooling from $38/month; unmanaged Fly Postgres is Unsupported.
Logs & metrics built in Partial Function and deploy logs included; analytics is a paid add-on. Yes Built-in metrics (Grafana), live logs, and log shipping.

Watch out for

Netlify

  • Every production deploy costs 15 credits, so the 300-credit free tier covers only about 20 deploys a month even with zero traffic.
  • The free tier has an account-wide hard stop: if one project uses all credits, every project on the account pauses.
  • Bandwidth burns credits quickly — 1 GB costs 20 credits.
  • New public projects on the Free plan show a Powered by Netlify badge by default.

Fly.io

  • New pay-as-you-go organizations get no free allowance.
  • Managed Postgres starts at $38/month (Basic) plus $0.28/GB-month storage; unmanaged Fly Postgres is labeled Unsupported on the pricing page.
  • Managed Postgres still lacks security patches and version upgrades, extra third-party extensions beyond pgvector and PostGIS, customer-facing alerting, and migration tools.
  • Per-second compute plus $0.02/GB egress makes bills variable; prices differ by region.

Read the full reviews: Netlify and Fly.io. Or answer four questions to see what fits your project.