Railway pricing in 2026, explained, and the same app on while
Railway bills a subscription, which works as credit, then what your app uses. Here’s how to read its price list, what three typical apps cost, and the same app on while.
By Grégoire Mougeolle, co-founder of Nextmap. Facts checked on November 2, 2026. How this comparison is made.
How Railway bills
- The subscription works as credit. Hobby costs $5 per month and includes $5 of usage, Pro costs $20 with $20 of usage. Beyond that, you pay the difference1.
- Compute is billed by the minute. You pay $20 per vCPU and $10 per GB of memory, per month, based on what your app really uses1.
- The database is a service like any other. It’s billed for the CPU, memory and disk it uses1.
- The spending cap stops everything, production included. At the limit you set, Railway stops your services3.
Try while on your app, without an account. Copy the instructions
Railway’s plans
| Plan | Price | What’s included |
|---|---|---|
| Free | $0, after a 30-day trial | $1 of usage per month, 0.5 GB of memory per service2 |
| Hobby | $5 per month | $5 of usage, one person2 |
| Pro | $20 per month | $20 of usage, members at no extra cost2 |
| Enterprise | On quote | SSO, dedicated machines2 |
The database, storage and traffic
| Item | At Railway |
|---|---|
| Disk | $0.15 per GB per month1 |
| Database backups | Daily ones kept 6 days, weekly ones 27 days, monthly ones 89 days5, and point-in-time recovery over about 4 weeks, as an option6 |
| Outbound traffic | $0.05 per GB1 |
| File storage | $0.015 per GB per month2 |
Three typical apps, per month
| App | At Railway | On while |
|---|---|---|
| A small always-on API (0.25 vCPU, 0.5 GB) and its database | $15.30 on Hobby, about €13.64, $20 on Pro, about €17.83 | At most €13.75, point-in-time recovery included |
| The same API with 1 vCPU and 2 GB, and its database | $45.30, about €40.39 | At most €39.25 |
| An app asleep most of the time, with its database | $5.68 on Hobby, about €5.06, with the database always on | About €5.96, for the database and 60 hours of activity |
Calculated on November 2, 2026 from the public price lists1,2, excl. VAT, in euros at the November 2 exchange rate7. The sleeping app is active 60 hours per month, at Railway as on while. A lightly loaded app costs less than these maximums, on either one.
What you pay on while
On while, you pay for what an app uses: €17 per vCPU and €8.50 per GiB of memory, per month, counted by the second. An S database costs €5 per month, and its disk €0.25 per GiB, backups included: one per day, with point-in-time recovery, and for a production database, a test restore every day proves it starts again. Each project has its budget: a change that would exceed it waits for your approval, an alert goes out at 80% and at 100%, and a live app is never cut off. Your AI agent, Claude Code or Cursor for example, deploys on its own, and everything runs in France.
Which one to choose
- Choose Railway if your apps must stop dead at a spending limit, production included, and your data can stay outside France.
- Choose while if you want to pay in euros, with your backups included, in France, and for your AI agent to deploy without breaking anything.
Next steps
Sources
- Railway, plans and price list, accessed November 2, 2026
- Railway, the pricing page, accessed November 2, 2026
- Railway, cost control, accessed November 2, 2026
- Railway, PostgreSQL (backups, point-in-time recovery), accessed November 2, 2026
- Railway, volume backups, accessed November 2, 2026
- Railway, point-in-time recovery (optional), accessed November 2, 2026
- European Central Bank, the euro exchange rate on November 2, 2026 (€1 = $1.1216), accessed November 2, 2026