Providers / Fly.io
Fly.io
Run Docker containers close to your users, billed per second.
fly.io · Prices checked 2026-08-01
- Type
- App platform
- Starting cost
- ≈$3/mo
- Free tier
- No
- Ease of use
- 3/5
Fly.io runs your Docker image as lightweight VMs (Machines) in regions around the world, billed per second while they run. It gives you more control than the git-push platforms — and expects more from you in return.
Good to know
- 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.
App platform
Fly.io Machines
- Best for
- Dockerized apps that want low cost, fine control, or multi-region placement.
- How deploys work
- fly launch builds the image and deploys it; configuration lives in fly.toml and the flyctl CLI.
- The tradeoff
- You operate more of the stack yourself — especially the database.
Why pick it
- Genuinely cheap always-on compute: a small Machine runs for about $2/month.
- Native scale-to-zero — Machines stop when idle and start on the next request.
- Deploy the same app to multiple regions with one config line.
- Real VMs you can SSH into, with metrics and logs built in.
Why look elsewhere
- No free allowance for new pay-as-you-go organizations.
- Fly Postgres is explicitly not a managed database — backups and failover are yours.
- The flyctl-and-fly.toml workflow is more to learn than git-push hosts.
- Per-second billing plus egress makes the monthly number bounce around.
Our ratings
What developers say
First-person reports from the past three years, drawn from public discussions and independent write-ups. These are individual experiences, not our ratings; open the original source for its workload and full context. Critical reports include a follow-up check so you can see whether the problem was fixed, partly addressed, remains current, or has no public resolution.
What people like 10 sources
After a year running company infrastructure on Fly, the author calls the move from AWS a great success, praising simplicity, the CLI, responsiveness, and cost savings.
One year of FlyA Rails consultant says they already liked Fly and praises its dead-simple deployment, strong documentation, dashboard, and overall simplicity.
Deploying Rails on Fly.ioA hands-on introduction praises Fly's VM model, flexible scale-to-zero behavior, lack of forced cold starts, and outstanding documentation.
Introducing Fly.ioA containerized Minecraft user says Fly.io is great and praises easy management, automatic stopping, and its CLI.
Thoughts on Fly.io?A founder using Fly.io says the platform has been great and easy to use for MVP infrastructure.
Need advice on hosting platforms for MVP developmentGo developers recommend Fly.io directly and describe it as amazing for small pure-Go web applications.
Favorite options for hosting pure-Go web appsA user recommends Fly.io for its low-cost allowance, strong deploy tool, and lack of manual system configuration.
Which cheap hosting service do you recommend?A Go hosting discussion includes a direct user endorsement that Fly.io is great.
In your experience, what are good hosting choices for Go?A Go developer recommends Fly.io based on years of using it for containers; another reports completing a Fly deployment successfully.
Recommendations for hosting a Go app in 2024The author documents a successful end-to-end Go and SQLite deployment after frustration with incomplete container-hosting guides elsewhere.
How I deployed a Go app with a SQLite database on Fly.ioCritical reports and follow-ups 10 sources
Long-time production users say reliability has not improved enough, global failures defeat multi-region protection, and instability makes Fly hard to recommend at scale.
Tips for avoiding outages after the April 27 incidentCustomers report flaky uptime and deploys that hang or fail without code changes; commenters question using Fly for mission-critical workloads.
Fly.io outage — resolvedA customer migrated to Coolify on DigitalOcean during a multi-hour outage, saying paid redundant Machines still failed and this was the second recent incident.
Fly.io outageExperienced Rails users warn about Fly reliability, support, manual database work, and operational complexity, with one explicitly recommending against it.
Can anyone compare Fly.io to Render.com?Users debate unexpectedly high costs and one says hostile handling of an ex-customer made them unwilling to recommend Fly despite liking the technical design.
Is Fly.io ridiculously expensive?Indian users call the region withdrawal frustrating because low latency was the reason they chose Fly and now must evaluate alternatives.
Fly.io will no longer support BOM region hostingA customer discovers a failed host weeks late and cannot restore the attached volume; Fly staff say the data is likely gone and acknowledge notification gaps.
Issue getting data after host machine crashUsers say Fly has suffered many outages and that a nominal shared vCPU is materially weaker than Render or Heroku equivalents.
Price comparison calculator for Fly.io, Heroku, Render, and RailwayReviews allege unauthorized or surprising charges, failed deployments, random dashboard errors, and instability serious enough to prompt a move to Vercel.
Fly.io reviewsA customer reports months of traffic being routed to distant European regions, undermining Fly's edge value proposition, with no resolution timeline from support.
Fly.io users in India, Sri Lanka, and Pakistan: beware poor routingApp platform
Fly.io Machines
What you'd realistically pay
| Project stage | Estimate | Based on |
|---|---|---|
| Just starting | ≈$3/mo | shared-cpu-1x, 256 MB — About $2.02/month in Amsterdam if always on; less with scale-to-zero. |
| Steady traffic | ≈$6/mo | shared-cpu-1x, 1 GB — About $5.92/month in Amsterdam, plus egress at $0.02/GB. |
| Growing | ≈$12/mo | Two 1 GB Machines — Two machines for availability; databases and egress on top. |
Published prices
| Plan | Price | What you get |
|---|---|---|
| shared-cpu-1x, 256 MB | $2.02/mo | Per month if running continuously (Amsterdam). |
| shared-cpu-1x, 1 GB | $5.92/mo | Per month if running continuously (Amsterdam). |
- 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.
Deploy workflow
| Deploy from Git push Connect a repository and every push deploys automatically. | Partial No native git integration; the documented path is flyctl in GitHub Actions. |
|---|---|
| Preview deploys Each branch or pull request gets its own temporary URL. | Partial PR apps work via the official GitHub Action, not out of the box. |
| Official CLI A maintained command-line tool for deploys and management. | Yes flyctl does everything: launch, deploy, scale, ssh, logs. |
| Instant rollbacks Revert to a previous deploy without rebuilding. | Partial Redeploy any previous image; no one-click dashboard rollback. |
Platform
| Custom domains + HTTPS Bring your own domain with TLS certificates handled. | Yes Custom domains with free managed certificates. |
|---|---|
| Built-in CDN / edge network Static assets served from locations near your visitors. | Partial Anycast routing sends users to the nearest region, but there is no static-asset CDN. |
| Serverless functions Run backend code without managing a server process. | No Machines are micro-VMs, not functions. |
| Docker containers Deploy your own container image. | Yes A Docker image is the deployment unit. |
| SSH / shell access Open a shell on the machine running your app. | Yes fly ssh console opens a shell in any running Machine. |
| EU hosting region Run the app itself in a European data center. | Yes Amsterdam, Paris, Frankfurt, London, and more. |
Runtime & operations
| Automatic scaling Capacity grows with traffic without manual resizing. | Yes Machines autostart and autostop with traffic; scale counts per region. |
|---|---|
| Scale to zero Costs stop (or pause) when nobody is using the app. | Yes Stopped Machines cost only their storage. |
| Scheduled jobs Run code on a schedule without an external trigger. | Partial Scheduled Machines run on fixed intervals; full cron needs a workaround. |
| Managed database A database the provider runs, backs up, and updates. | Partial Fly Postgres is automated-but-unmanaged; managed options come from partners like Supabase and Upstash. |
| Logs & metrics built in See what the app is doing without wiring up third parties. | Yes Built-in metrics (Grafana), live logs, and log shipping. |
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