Compare / Railway vs Hetzner Cloud
Railway vs Hetzner Cloud
Pre-calculated from hand-checked data — Railway checked 2026-09-15, Hetzner Cloud checked 2026-09-15.
The short version
Railway wins more of our comparison points, but Hetzner Cloud still fits if european projects that need serious compute or move a lot of traffic describes you.
Price Railway
Railway is cheaper at most of the stages we model.
Ease Railway
Railway is easier to get running: connect a repo or image; Railway detects the build, deploys it, and adds databases with one click.
Control Hetzner Cloud
Hetzner Cloud gives you more control over the stack — the flip side of the convenience trade.
Free tier Railway
Railway has a free tier; Hetzner Cloud doesn't.
Features Railway
Railway comes out ahead on 8 of the 15 features we track, versus 1.
What developers say about this matchup
First-person discussions from the past three years that compare these products directly. Summaries are paraphrased; follow the source for the full context.
Users compare Railway's seamless deploy UX and expensive memory with Hetzner plus self-hosted PaaS tools.
Railway experience on Hetzner?Production operators contrast managed-platform convenience with Hetzner-style VPS control, portability, recovery, and long-run cost.
Railway outage highlights managed platforms vs VPSAt a glance
| Railway | Hetzner Cloud | |
|---|---|---|
| Best for | Full-stack apps and APIs where you want the app and its database running in minutes. | European projects that need serious compute or move a lot of traffic. |
| How deploys work | Connect a repo or image; Railway detects the build, deploys it, and adds databases with one click. | You get root on a bare server: bring your own setup, or use one-click apps like Docker and WordPress. |
| The tradeoff | Pure usage billing means the bill moves with your traffic — predictable only while the app is small. | Self-managed like any VPS, and the bandwidth advantage mostly applies to EU locations. |
| Free tier | Free: $1 of monthly usage credits, capped at 1 vCPU / 0.5 GB per service, one replica, and 3-day log history. | None |
What you'd realistically pay
| Project stage | Railway | Hetzner Cloud | Cheaper |
|---|---|---|---|
| Just starting | ≈$5/mo Hobby — The $5 minimum becomes usage credit; a small, mostly idle service usually fits inside it. | ≈€5.99/mo CX23 (EU) — €5.49 + €0.50 IPv4. 2 shared vCPU, 4 GB RAM, 40 GB SSD, 20 TB traffic. Germany and Finland only. | Railway |
| Steady traffic | ≈$10/mo Hobby + usage — Roughly a quarter vCPU and 512 MB always on; a small database adds a few dollars. | ≈€8.99/mo CX33 (EU) — €8.49 + €0.50 IPv4. 4 shared vCPU, 8 GB RAM, 80 GB SSD, 20 TB traffic. | ≈ Tie |
| Growing | ≈$20/mo Pro — $20 minimum with higher resource limits and unlimited team seats. | ≈€43.49/mo CCX13 (EU) — €42.99 + €0.50 IPv4. 2 dedicated vCPU, 8 GB RAM, 80 GB NVMe — move to dedicated CPUs when shared bursting stops being enough. | Railway |
Railway pricing notes
- Usage rates: about $20 per vCPU-month, $10 per GB of RAM-month, $0.15 per GB of volume storage, $0.05 per GB of egress — all metered per second.
- Postgres, MySQL, Redis, and other databases deploy as one-click services and bill through the same usage meters.
- The built-in CDN is free on every plan; cache hits skip origin compute and egress.
Hetzner Cloud pricing notes
- Traffic overage costs €1/TB in the EU — most providers charge 10–100x that per GB.
- Billed hourly up to a monthly cap.
- Singapore pricing is higher: CCX13 costs €53.99 and CCX23 costs €108.49 before IPv4.
- The Arm-based CAX plans match CX specs at similar prices if the Intel CX line is out of stock.
Our ratings
Ease of use Railway
Pricing clarity Hetzner Cloud
Free tier Railway
Scaling Railway
Control Hetzner Cloud
Feature by feature
Railway wins 8, Hetzner Cloud wins 1, with 6 even.
Deploy workflow
| Railway | Hetzner Cloud | |
|---|---|---|
| Deploy from Git push | Yes Connect a GitHub repo; Railway detects the stack and deploys on push. | No No deploy pipeline — bring your own CI or scripts. |
| Preview deploys | Yes PR environments deploy a copy of every service in the project. | No Nothing built in. |
| Official CLI | Yes The railway CLI links local dev to project env vars and deploys. | Yes hcloud CLI manages servers, networks, and snapshots. |
| Instant rollbacks | Yes Redeploy any previous deployment from the dashboard. | Partial Snapshots and paid backups restore machines; no deploy-level rollback. |
Platform
| Railway | Hetzner Cloud | |
|---|---|---|
| Custom domains + HTTPS | Yes Custom domains with automatic TLS on all plans. | Yes Point DNS at the server; TLS is yours via certbot or a proxy. |
| Built-in CDN / edge network | Yes Built-in edge CDN on every plan at no extra fee; off by default, enabled per service, with Edge Rules and CLI controls. | No No CDN product — put Cloudflare in front if needed. |
| Serverless functions | No Everything is a long-running service, not functions. | No Not a VPS feature. |
| Docker containers | Yes Deploy from a Dockerfile or a public/private image. | Yes Docker CE one-click app or install it yourself. |
| SSH / shell access | Partial railway ssh opens a shell inside the running container. | Yes Full root SSH. |
| EU hosting region | Yes EU (Amsterdam) region available alongside US and Asia. | Yes Germany and Finland are the home turf — this is where the value is. |
Runtime & operations
| Railway | Hetzner Cloud | |
|---|---|---|
| Automatic scaling | Partial Vertical usage scales within plan limits; horizontal replicas exist but need Pro. | No Manual resizing or manual fleet management. |
| Scale to zero | Yes App sleeping stops compute billing after 10 idle minutes. | No Servers bill until deleted, even powered off. |
| Scheduled jobs | Yes Any service can run on a cron schedule instead of continuously. | Yes Classic cron on the box. |
| Managed database | Yes One-click Postgres, MySQL, Redis, and Mongo billed through the same usage meters. | No No managed database product — self-host or go external. |
| Logs & metrics built in | Yes Logs, CPU/RAM metrics, and usage graphs built into the dashboard. | Partial Basic server graphs in the console; app-level monitoring is yours. |
Watch out for
Railway
- Usage billing has no hard cap — a busy or misbehaving app can outgrow any estimate.
- Services can sleep after 10 idle minutes to save money, but outbound database connections or telemetry can keep them awake, and the first request after sleep is slow.
- The $5 Hobby plan is limited to a single developer.
- Config as Code (railway.toml / railway.json) is deprecated in favor of the IaC SDK (.railway/railway.ts). From 2026-08-28, new services in new projects no longer deploy via Config as Code; the old system is gone on 2026-12-01.
Hetzner Cloud
- Hetzner raised prices on 15 June 2026: dedicated CCX and shared CPX plans roughly tripled, while the budget CX line rose about 35%.
- The cheap CX plans are sold in Germany and Finland only, in limited capacity — Hetzner sometimes pauses sales when stock runs out.
- US locations include only 1–2 TB of traffic versus 20 TB in the EU — the famous value is a European value.
- Singapore has separate, higher prices. A CCX13 costs €53.99 there versus €42.99 in the EU.
- A public IPv4 address costs €0.50/month extra; only IPv6 is free.
- Servers bill until deleted, even while powered off.
Read the full reviews: Railway and Hetzner Cloud. Or answer four questions to see what fits your project.