---
title: "Railway alternative - Deplo"
description: "Railway meters memory at $10 a GB, CPU at $20 a vCPU and traffic at $0.05 a GB. Deplo runs the same containers on a server with one price on it."
url: "https://deplo.build/comparison/railway"
image: "https://deplo.build/api/media/file/og_cover.png"
updated: "2026-10-08"
---

# Deplo vs Railway

## A server costs what a server costs.

Railway meters memory at $10 a gigabyte and CPU at $20 a vCPU. Here the machine has one price.

[Get started](https://deplo.build/get-started)

[Read the docs](https://deplo.build/docs/getting-started/install)

![Deplo dashboard](https://deplo.build/api/media/file/deplo_screenshot-1.png)

## Three numbers to do the arithmetic on.

All three come from their own price list and their own documentation.

### Four vCPU and 8 GB, flat out: $160 a month there.

Railway's published rates are $20 per vCPU and $10 per GB of memory a month, for what the app uses. A partner VPS with those exact numbers starts at a few euros, and Deplo on top is free.

### A terabyte out costs about $50 there.

Every gigabyte a service sends out of Railway is $0.05, with none set aside for traffic. Deplo adds nothing per gigabyte: traffic is whatever your provider's plan says it is.

### A volume as big as your disk.

On Railway Pro a volume starts at 50 GB, stops at 1 TB, and a service can mount exactly one. Here a volume is space on your own disk, and an app mounts as many as it needs.

| | Deplo | Railway |
| --- | --- | --- |
| **Your own hardware**: One command installs Deplo on a VPS, a dedicated server or the machine in your office. | Yes | No |
| **Nothing per gigabyte**: Deplo charges nothing for traffic. What it costs is what your provider's plan says, and a VPS plan sells you the port. | Yes | No |
| **Volumes the size of your disk**: A volume is space on the server, an app mounts as many as it needs, and the data survives a redeploy. | Yes | No |
| **Roles you write yourself**: One capability per action, and roles built out of them. Not a fixed list of three. | Yes | No |
| **Access to a single project**: A folder share gives somebody everything inside one folder, and nothing outside it. | Yes | Partial |
| **The activity trail, included**: Who did what, when and where, on one timeline, in the build everybody installs. | Yes | Partial |
| **Builds kept with no expiry**: Up to twenty recent builds stay on your server as images, with no expiry, so a rollback runs one again in seconds and rebuilds nothing. | Yes | Partial |
| **Backups in a bucket you own**: Encrypted on the server before they leave, to your S3-compatible bucket or to another machine. | Yes | Partial |
| **The bill stops when the app does**: A server costs the same when nobody visits, and every app on it shares that one bill. Railway meters by the second and can put an idle service to sleep, so past the plan fee a quiet project costs almost nothing. | No | Yes |
| **Somebody else keeps the machine alive**: The server is yours, so the kernel, the disks and the uptime are yours too. On Railway that is their job. | No | Yes |

## The same stack, metered and not.

Three answers, two numbers. Theirs comes from their published rates; ours is a plan you can buy today.

Deplo itself: free, every feature, no seats.

One server for the whole team and all its services.

No meter: the plan has one price a month.

- Railway Pro: $20 per month, with unlimited members and $20 of usage included.
- $20 per vCPU and $10 per GB of memory, per month.
- $0.05 per GB of traffic.
- One always-on service is a gigabyte of memory on both sides: here half a vCPU and a gigabyte at their published rates, $20 a month. A heavier service costs more there and the same here.
- Prices read on 2026-10-08 from https://railway.com/pricing.

Railway Pro numbers are their published rates, read on 8 October 2026.

## Try Deplo before you leave Railway.

Click around a real Deplo on a real server for a few minutes. No email, no password, nothing to migrate yet.

## What you get on day one

Deploys, backups, logs, metrics and TLS, already on. Nothing to buy on top, nothing to hunt down.

### Let AI interact with your infra

Ask, and it's done. Connect Claude, Cursor or any assistant that supports MCP, and it can deploy, read the logs and roll back when you ask in plain words. It works with a key you create and can revoke at any time, and it can never do more than you can. Nothing connects until you create a key, and one switch turns it off for the whole team.

[Learn more](https://deplo.build/use-cases/ai-interact-with-infra)

### Ship on every push

Your whole release process becomes a push. Connect GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket or Gitea once. Every push to your main branch goes live, every pull request on GitHub gets its own preview link that disappears when it closes, and a bad release goes back to the version that worked.

[Learn more](https://deplo.build/use-cases/ship-on-every-push)

### Control who can do what

Your team works on the same apps without stepping on each other. Give each person exactly the access they need, like "can deploy, can't delete", and hand a freelancer or a client one project and nothing else. The activity timeline shows who did what and when, right in the dashboard.

[Learn more](https://deplo.build/use-cases/control-who-can-do-what)

### Host your Web app

Your app online without touching a setting. Connect the repo and you get a live link, and HTTPS the moment you add your domain. Deplo recognises your framework and builds it for you, and Postgres or Redis sits next to your app in two clicks. Same stack you ran on the cloud. Only the bill changed.

[Learn more](https://deplo.build/use-cases/host-your-web-application)

## Moving from Railway

Where the money goes, and what you give up.

### Is Railway always more expensive?

No. Below the first always-on service their free plan or the $5 Hobby plan, usage included, is cheaper than any server. The gap opens once something stays up around the clock: at $20 per vCPU and $10 per GB of memory per month, a 4 vCPU and 8 GB stack running flat out is $160 a month there, against a VPS with the same numbers for a few euros.

### Can I move a Railway project to Deplo?

There is no import wizard for Railway today. In practice it is the same repository, the same variables and the same Dockerfile, or the same Railpack build: you point Deplo at the repo, set the variables again and deploy.

### Does Deplo bill by usage?

No. Deplo is free, and a server costs the same whether it is busy or idle. That is the trade: no meter and no surprise invoice, but no scale to zero either.

### What about my Postgres and my volumes?

Databases are managed by Deplo on your own server, on the environment's private network, with scheduled backups encrypted before they leave. A volume is space on your disk: an app mounts as many as it needs, with no ceiling but the disk.

## Ten minutes from now, 
it's live.

Answer three questions and pick a host, or install Deplo on a server you already have. It's free, and leaving is as easy as arriving. What you do with the money you save is your business.

[Docs](https://deplo.build/docs)

[Get started](https://deplo.build/get-started)

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