Most people looking for Fly.io alternatives hit one of three walls. There is no free tier: Fly stopped selling its plans with free allowances on October 7, 2024, and new organizations now get a trial of 2 hours of machine runtime or 7 days. The database costs more than the app: a 1 GB machine is $6.70 a month, but Managed Postgres starts at $38. And there is more to manage than on a git-push platform, from a Dockerfile and fly.toml to machines, volumes and regions.
Fly.io is still very good at what it was built for. It runs apps in 17 regions with Anycast routing, idle machines can stop and cost only their storage, and per-machine prices are published by size.
Below are five Fly.io alternatives, what each is best at, what an always-on app with a database costs on each, and who should stay on Fly.
Last checked
Every competitor detail was checked against that vendor's official pages on 2026-11-02. Plans and prices change, so confirm on their site before you decide. EthioDeploy is our product, and it's listed first.
Fly.io runs your app as Machines, lightweight VMs built from a Dockerfile, buildpacks or a prebuilt image, in 17 regions connected by a private WireGuard network. Billing is pay as you go with no platform fee: a shared-cpu-1x machine is $2.19 a month with 256 MB, $3.69 with 512 MB and $6.70 with 1 GB in the cheapest regions, and extra RAM is $6 per GB. Stopped machines pay only for their root filesystem. Volumes are $0.15 per GB-month, a dedicated IPv4 is $2 a month, and egress ranges from $0.02 per GB in North America and Europe to $0.12 in Africa and India. Managed Postgres starts at $38 a month, and support plans start at $29.
| Feature | Fly.io | EthioDeploy | Render | Railway | DigitalOcean App Platform | Coolify |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free tier | None. 2-hour or 7-day trial | 1 project, sleeps after 30 min | Sleeps after 15 min, 750 hours/month | $1 credit/month, 0.5 GB cap | Static sites only | Self-hosted is free |
| Always-on, about 1 GB RAM | $6.70/month | $10/month (Pro) | No 1 GB tier: $25 for 2 GB | About $10 plus CPU | $10 to $12/month | Your server's price |
| Smallest managed Postgres | $38/month | Included in plan (5 GB on Pro) | $6/month | Usage-based template | $7/month dev database | One-click, on your server |
| Regions | 17, with Anycast | 1 | 5 | 4 | 12 | Wherever your servers are |
| Build from | Dockerfile, buildpacks or image | Repo or Dockerfile | Repo or Dockerfile | Repo or Dockerfile | Dockerfile or buildpacks | Nixpacks, Railpack, Dockerfile, Compose |
| Idle apps | Auto-stop; pay only for storage | Free sleeps; paid always on | Free sleeps | Optional sleep | Always on | Always on |
| Scheduled jobs | Scheduled machines: hourly to monthly | No, run a scheduler in a worker | Cron jobs | Cron, 5-minute minimum | Jobs, 15-minute minimum | Yes |
| Persistent volumes | Yes, $0.15/GB-month | No | Disks, $0.25/GB-month | Yes, $0.15/GB-month | No | Yes, on your server |
| Built-in AI coding agent | No | Yes, from $5/month | No | Railway Agent, at model cost | No | No |
EthioDeploy builds your GitHub repo into a container on every push. It detects Node.js, Python, Go, Ruby, PHP and static sites, so there is no Dockerfile or config file to maintain. Every plan includes a managed Postgres, MySQL or Redis addon, and each project has an AI coding agent that edits and runs your code in a sandbox, then opens a pull request.
Free runs 1 project (256 MB, sleeps after 30 minutes idle) with a 512 MB database. Pro is $10/month: always on, 1 GB per container, a 5 GB database and custom domains. Business is $30/month: 2 GB per container, a 20 GB database and 5 team seats. Both meter usage against a monthly quota; overage comes from a prepaid wallet.
Render runs web services, background workers, cron jobs and private services at a fixed price per instance size, with managed Postgres and Key Value. It builds from your repo or a Dockerfile, so an app already containerized for Fly moves over as it is.
Free web services spin down after 15 minutes idle, with 750 free hours a month. Always-on services are $7/month for 512 MB and $25 for 2 GB. Postgres starts at $6/month (256 MB) and $19 for 1 GB. Workspace plans have no seat fees: Hobby is free and Pro, which adds full-stack preview environments, is $25/month plus compute.
Railway also bills per second for the RAM and CPU you use, but deploys from GitHub or a Dockerfile without a config file. Databases are one-click templates on a project canvas, and services can sleep when idle.
Free gives $1 of usage a month with 0.5 GB per service. Hobby is $5/month including $5 of usage; Pro is $20/month per workspace with unlimited seats. RAM is $10 per GB-month, CPU $20 per vCPU-month, egress $0.05 per GB and volumes $0.15 per GB-month.
App Platform builds from a Dockerfile or Cloud Native Buildpacks and runs services, workers and jobs at fixed monthly prices per container size. It sits next to DigitalOcean's managed Postgres, MySQL and Valkey.
512 MiB is $5/month. 1 GiB is $10 for a single fixed instance or $12 for a size that can scale out; 2 GiB is $25. A dev Postgres is $7/month; managed Postgres starts at $15.15 and Valkey at $15. The free tier covers 3 static sites only.
Coolify is an open-source (Apache-2.0) platform you install on your own Linux servers. It deploys from Nixpacks, Railpack, a Dockerfile, Docker Compose or a prebuilt image, and has one-click databases. You can run it on servers in as many regions as you rent.
Self-hosted Coolify is free. Coolify Cloud, which runs Coolify for you while you bring the servers, is $5/month for 2 servers plus $3 per extra server. The servers themselves are billed by your provider.
Pro at $10 a month covers a 1 GB container and a 5 GB Postgres, MySQL or Redis. On Fly the machine is $6.70, but Managed Postgres adds at least $38.
Each is its own service type with a published price, Postgres starts at $6, and there are no seat fees.
Your Dockerfiles and Compose files carry over, and databases cost only the disk they use. You take on updates, security and backups.
None of these alternatives runs one app in 17 regions behind Anycast. If latency for distant users matters more than price, Fly is still the better fit.
Not for new organizations. Fly.io stopped selling its Hobby, Launch and Scale plans, which came with free allowances, on October 7, 2024. New organizations get a trial of up to 2 hours of machine runtime or 7 days, whichever comes first, then pay as they go. Organizations already on the old plans keep their allowances.
For an always-on 1 GB app with Postgres, EthioDeploy Pro at $10 a month includes both. Render's cheapest always-on service is $7 for 512 MB plus $6 for Postgres. If you already rent a server, self-hosted Coolify is free.
EthioDeploy (1 project, sleeps after 30 minutes idle), Render (web services sleep after 15 minutes, free Postgres expires after 30 days) and Railway ($1 of credit a month). Self-hosted Coolify is free software on a server you pay for. DigitalOcean's free tier covers static sites only.
Fly's Managed Postgres starts at $38 a month for the Basic plan with 1 GB of RAM, plus $0.28 per GB of storage. It is a managed cluster rather than a small shared database. Render's Postgres starts at $6, DigitalOcean's dev database at $7, and EthioDeploy includes a 5 GB database in its $10 Pro plan.
DigitalOcean App Platform has 12 regions, Render 5 and Railway 4, but you pick one region per service rather than running one app everywhere behind Anycast. Coolify runs wherever you rent servers. EthioDeploy runs in one region.
Yes, on all of them. EthioDeploy builds the repo's Dockerfile when it has one, and you can set a Dockerfile path if it isn't at the root; without one, it detects Node.js, Python, Go, Ruby, PHP and static sites. Your app should listen on the PORT environment variable. Settings from fly.toml, such as the start command and environment variables, have to be set again on any of them.
Create a project from the same GitHub repo. Put your Fly secrets in a .env file and run ethiodeploy env push .env, then add a Postgres, MySQL or Redis addon, which sets DATABASE_URL or REDIS_URL. To move Postgres data, turn on external access for the addon and restore a pg_dump from Fly into it.
Competitor facts come from these official pages, read on 2026-11-02:
EthioDeploy details are on our pricing and docs pages. Spot a mistake? Tell us via Contact and we'll fix it.