PaaS / app platforms, in detail
Run containers without owning servers — usually chosen for the bundled database and the deploy UX. The category's free lunch ended in stages (Heroku 2022, Railway 2023, Fly.io 2024), so the real comparison is entry price and billing model. Two additions beyond the overview: Google's scale-to-zero option and the self-hosted escape hatch.
| Tool | Free tier | Entry price | Billing unit | Watch out for | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Railway | None ($5 one-time credit) | Hobby $5/mo incl. $5 usage | Per-second usage + seats | No recurring free tier since Aug 2023 | Slickest deploy UX; pay for exactly what runs |
| Render | Free services (sleep after 15 min idle) | Instances from ~$7/mo | Per instance + per seat | Free Postgres expires after 30 days | Heroku-style DX at lower cost, DB + cron included |
| Fly.io | None for new orgs (trial credit) | Smallest VM ≈ $2/mo | Pure pay-as-you-go, per second | Free allowances ended for new orgs Oct 2024 | Multi-region Firecracker VMs close to users |
| Heroku | None (removed Nov 2022) | Eco $5/mo (sleeps), Basic $7 | Per dyno + add-ons | Add-on costs (Postgres, Redis) stack quickly | The mature original: buildpacks + add-on ecosystem |
| DO App Platform | 3 free static apps | Services from $5/mo | Per component, flat | Fewer regions/features than the majors | Flat, predictable prices inside a DigitalOcean stack |
| Google Cloud Run | Always-free slice (requests/CPU-seconds) | Pay-per-use above | Per request + CPU/GiB-second | Cold starts and GCP billing complexity | Scale-to-zero containers with a real free slice |
| Coolify (self-host) | Unlimited — OSS on your VPS | $0 + a ~$5 VPS | Your server | You are the platform team now | Heroku-like UX on hardware you control |
Pricing models and free tiers change often — check each vendor for current terms. Compiled July 2026; the most volatile figures verified on official pricing pages.
Official pages: Railway · Render · Fly.io · Heroku · DO App Platform · Google Cloud Run · Coolify (self-host)
Entry price at a glance
Cheapest paid plan, USD per month — per-user plans shown for a single seat. Hatched bars are usage-based or quote-only; values marked ~ are approximate.
Notes & recent changes
- PaaS 'free tiers' are mostly gone: Heroku removed free dynos Nov 2022, Railway replaced its free plan with a one-time credit in Aug 2023, and Fly.io dropped free allowances for new orgs in Oct 2024.
- Railway's 2025 'Metal' rollout cut egress prices roughly in half — usage-based can be cheap if your workload is bursty.
- A $5 VPS + Coolify replicates most of the PaaS experience for hobby projects — at the cost of owning upgrades and backups.
Which one should you pick?
- Bursty side projects, pay-per-use → Railway or Fly.io.
- A real free tier you can demo on → Render (mind the cold starts).
- Boring, flat bills → DigitalOcean App Platform.
- Traffic that idles at zero → Cloud Run. Full control → Coolify.