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Railway · Managed platform

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Temps vs Railway

Railway meters usage per second. Temps is free to self-host.

Get started with TempsAll comparisons

Monthly cost at a glance

Temps
Railway
Solo developer
Free
$5/mo
3-person team
Free
$20/mo workspace fee+
5-person team
Free
$20/mo workspace fee+
Typical full-stack app
Free
$25–80/mo
$curl -fsSL https://temps.sh/deploy.sh | bash

The short answer

Railway
Railway is a managed platform billing a $20/month workspace fee plus per-second CPU, memory and bandwidth usage. Seats are unlimited and included, which is unusual among managed platforms.
Temps
Temps runs on a server you already pay for, so the bill is flat rather than metered, and analytics, error tracking, session replay and uptime monitoring are in the binary rather than third-party subscriptions.
What Railway has that Temps doesn't
Instant database provisioning, marketplace templates, and zero infrastructure management — Temps needs you to run and maintain the host.

Scored, dimension by dimension

  • Billing model

    Temps

    Temps

    Fixed server cost, no metering

    Railway

    $20/mo workspace + per-second usage

  • Built-in observability

    Temps

    Temps

    Analytics, errors, replay, uptime

    Railway

    Logs and metrics; rest is third-party

  • Database provisioning

    Railway

    Temps

    Managed Postgres/MySQL/Mongo/Redis on your box

    Railway

    One-click, fully managed

  • Operations burden

    Railway

    Temps

    You run the server

    Railway

    Zero infrastructure management

  • Per-seat pricing

    Tie

    Temps

    None

    Railway

    None (workspace fee instead)

Why teams switch from Railway

Railway's Pro plan is $20/month per workspace — seats are unlimited and included, which is genuinely better than most managed platforms — plus per-second metered CPU, memory and bandwidth. Temps is free on your own VPS, with analytics, error tracking, session replay and uptime monitoring included, and a flat bill instead of a metered one.

Railway pricing 2026: free plan, $5/mo Hobby, $20/mo Pro
Railway has a permanent Free plan ($0 with $1/mo of non-rollover credit), Hobby ($5/mo including $5 of usage), Pro ($20/mo per workspace including $20 of usage) and Enterprise. Railway states plainly that on Pro "seats are unlimited and included — the fee is per workspace, not per seat", so headcount does not change the subscription. What does change it is consumption: every plan is a credit rather than a cap, and usage above the credit is billed on top at $20/vCPU-mo and $10/GB-mo. Temps is a single VPS you control with no metering.
Full observability built in — Railway has none
Railway has no error tracking, no web analytics, and no session replay. To match Temps you'd add Sentry ($26+/mo), Plausible or PostHog ($9+/mo), and a session replay tool ($0–$99/mo). Temps ships all of this in one binary — Sentry-compatible DSN, privacy-first analytics, FullStory-equivalent replay, and uptime monitoring with alerting.
Self-host on any server — Railway locks you to their cloud
Railway has no self-hosted option. You pay their rates or migrate. Temps installs on any VPS, bare-metal server, or cloud VM with a single curl command. MIT / Apache 2.0 — no usage restrictions, no deployment caps, full source available.
Pingora proxy + WireGuard mesh, no resource caps
Temps uses Pingora (Cloudflare's open-source Rust proxy, handling over 1 trillion requests/day across Cloudflare's network) and embedded WireGuard for encrypted multi-node networking. Your server, your limits — no execution time caps, no memory ceilings, no bandwidth overages.

Feature comparison

What each platform includes out of the box, and what needs a separate subscription.

  • Git push deployments

    Temps

    Yes

    Railway

    Yes

  • Docker support

    Temps

    Yes

    Railway

    Yes

  • Automatic SSL

    Temps

    Yes

    Railway

    Yes

  • Preview deployments

    Temps

    Yes

    Railway

    Yes

  • Managed PostgreSQL

    Temps

    Yes

    Railway

    Yes

  • Managed Redis

    Temps

    Yes

    Railway

    Yes

  • Error tracking

    Temps

    Yes
    Sentry-compatible DSN, built-in

    Railway

    No
    External tool required (e.g. Sentry $26+/mo)

  • Web analytics

    Temps

    Yes
    Built-in, privacy-first

    Railway

    No
    External tool required (e.g. Plausible $9+/mo)

  • Session replay

    Temps

    Yes
    rrweb-based via @temps-sdk/react-analytics

    Railway

    No
    External tool required (e.g. FullStory $99+/mo)

  • Uptime monitoring

    Temps

    Yes
    Built-in, 60s check interval

    Railway

    No
    External tool required

  • Self-hosted option

    Temps

    Yes
    MIT / Apache 2.0, any VPS

    Railway

    No
    Cloud-only, no self-hosting

  • Multi-node clustering

    Temps

    Yes
    WireGuard mesh, one-command join

    Railway

    Managed for you
    Replicas and regions handled by Railway

  • Per-seat pricing

    Temps

    No
    Free regardless of team size

    Railway

    No
    None — seats unlimited and included on Pro

  • Instant provisioning

    Temps

    Yes

    Railway

    Yes

  • Framework autodetection

    Temps

    Yes
    Dockerfile or source autodetect

    Railway

    Yes
    Nixpacks

  • AI Gateway

    Temps

    Yes
    Routes OpenAI/Anthropic/Gemini with OTel tracing

    Railway

    No
    Not available

What it actually costs

Railway's Free plan ($0, $1/mo credit) and Hobby plan ($5/mo) cover solo work, and Pro is $20/mo per workspace with unlimited included seats — so unlike Vercel, adding developers costs nothing. The variable is consumption, not headcount: every plan is a usage credit rather than a cap, so a service with a constant resource floor bills above the subscription. A Temps VPS is free with no metering, which wins on predictability rather than on seats.

ScenarioTempsRailway
Solo developerFree — your own VPS$5/mo (Hobby, 1 user)
3-person teamFree (no per-seat cost)$20/mo workspace fee + usage (no seat cost)
5-person teamFree (no per-seat cost)$20/mo workspace fee + usage (no seat cost)
Typical full-stack appFree (self-hosted)$25–80/mo (usage dependent)

Railway Pricing Plans 2026

PlanPriceIncluded CreditsSeatsBest For
Free$0$1/mo (no rollover)1Small always-on apps
Trial$0$5 one-time, reverts to Free1Evaluation
Hobby$5/mo$5/mo of usageIndividual developersSolo side projects
Pro$20/mo per workspace$20/mo of usageUnlimited, includedTeams
EnterpriseCustomCustomUnlimitedCustom SLAs, dedicated support

Source: Railway pricing page. Numbers current as of 2026.

Which one should you choose?

Choose Temps if you…

  • You want a predictable flat bill instead of per-second metered usage
  • You need built-in error tracking, analytics, and session replay
  • You want to self-host for compliance or data sovereignty
  • Your workload has a constant resource floor, where per-second metering stops being cheap
  • You want multi-node deployments with WireGuard mesh networking
  • You want no execution time or memory caps on your deployments
  • You need an AI Gateway for routing OpenAI/Anthropic/Gemini traffic

What Railway does better than Temps

  • You want zero infrastructure management — Railway handles everything
  • You're a solo developer and the Hobby plan's $5/mo fits your budget
  • You need Railway's specific integrations or marketplace templates
  • You prefer usage-based billing where you pay only for what you use
  • You need instant database provisioning without any ops setup
  • You want a proven platform — Temps is young (v0.1.0)

Migrating from Railway

Easy difficulty

Railway apps need zero code changes. Dockerfile-based services deploy directly to Temps; for buildpack-detected apps, Temps autodetects the same framework (Node.js, Python, Ruby, Go, Rust, Java). The only manual steps are exporting environment variables from Railway's dashboard and updating database connection strings to point at Temps-managed PostgreSQL or Redis instances.

When to migrate away from Railway

Switch when…Details
Metered usage outgrows a flat rateRailway Pro is $20/mo per workspace with seats included, so team size is not the cost driver — consumption is. A service holding a full vCPU and 1 GB of RAM around the clock prices at $30/mo in resources on Railway's published rates, before egress. A VPS runs Temps at any team size and any duty cycle.
You need built-in analytics, error tracking, or session replayRailway has no built-in observability. Matching Temps requires separate subscriptions: Sentry ($26+/mo), Plausible or PostHog ($9+/mo), and a session replay tool ($0–$99/mo) — adding $35–$175/mo on top of Railway's compute costs.
You need to self-host for compliance or data sovereigntyRailway is closed-source SaaS with no self-hosting option — if you stop paying, you migrate or your apps go offline. Temps is MIT / Apache 2.0 and installs on any VPS, cloud VM, or bare-metal server you control.
Compute and bandwidth costs are climbing with trafficRailway bills CPU, memory and bandwidth by the second on top of the subscription credit, at $20/vCPU-mo, $10/GB-mo of RAM and $0.05/GB of egress. That is cheap for a bursty app and expensive for a constant one. A single Hetzner CX23 (€5.49/mo excluding VAT, ~$6.49) runs the whole platform; scaling further means adding a server, not a metered bill.
You want multi-node deployments without vendor lock-inRailway runs single-tenant managed containers with no way to add worker nodes yourself. Temps supports WireGuard-mesh multi-node clustering — run 'temps join' on additional servers to connect them to your control plane over an encrypted peer-to-peer mesh.

Frequently asked questions

Is Railway or Temps cheaper for a 3-person team in 2026?

It depends on the workload, not on the team size. Railway does not charge per seat — Pro is $20/month per workspace with unlimited included seats — so three developers cost the same as one. Railway's $20 subscription also includes $20 of usage, so a small bursty app can sit entirely inside it. Temps is free and you provide the VPS, and it bundles analytics, error tracking, session replay and uptime monitoring that would otherwise be separate subscriptions on Railway. Temps wins clearly when your app has a constant resource floor — a service holding a full vCPU and 1 GB of RAM continuously prices at $30/month in Railway resources — or when you want the bundled observability. Railway wins when your app idles most of the day and you would rather not operate a server.

Does Railway have built-in analytics or error tracking?

No. Railway has no built-in web analytics, error tracking, or session replay as of 2026. To get the equivalent of Temps' observability stack on Railway, you'd add Sentry ($26+/mo), Plausible or PostHog ($9–$50+/mo), and a session replay tool ($0–$99/mo) — adding $35–$175/mo on top of Railway's compute costs. Temps includes all of this in the same binary as the deployment engine.

Can I self-host Railway?

No. Railway is closed-source SaaS with no self-hosting option. If you stop paying, you migrate or your apps go offline. Temps is MIT / Apache 2.0 — install it on any VPS, cloud VM, or bare-metal server. Your data, your server, no lock-in.

What proxy does Temps use — is it production-ready?

Temps uses Pingora, the open-source Rust reverse proxy that Cloudflare built to replace Nginx across its global network. Pingora handles over 1 trillion requests per day on Cloudflare's infrastructure. Temps ships Pingora as the routing layer, so you get enterprise-grade proxy reliability without running a separate Nginx or Caddy instance.

How does Temps handle multi-node deployments vs Railway?

Railway runs single-tenant managed containers — you can't add worker nodes or build a multi-server cluster. Temps supports multi-node deployments via WireGuard mesh networking: run 'temps join' on additional servers to connect them to your control plane over an encrypted peer-to-peer mesh. This lets you distribute workloads across multiple VPS instances without exposing them to the public internet.

Further reading

PaaS Tax Calculator

Calculate exactly how much you're overpaying on Railway vs self-hosting. Enter your team size and usage to see the monthly savings.

Railway Pricing 2026: What It Actually Costs

The full breakdown of Railway's usage-credit model, resource rates, and a worked sustained-load example, independent of the Temps comparison.

Cheapest Vercel Pro Alternative With No Per-Seat Fees

See how Railway's per-workspace Pro pricing and per-second metering compare to Temps and other Vercel alternatives that avoid per-seat billing.

Ready to switch from Railway?

Self-host Temps for free, or join Temps Cloud from $29/month for queryable managed telemetry, query compute, and offsite backups.

Read the quickstart guideSee pricing