Hetzner
Railway
| Feature | Hetzner | Railway |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing | From $3.79/mo | Free / from $5/mo |
| Free Plan | ✗ No | ✓ Yes |
| Rating | 4.6 / 5 | 4.5 / 5 |
| Best For | startups, indie-hackers, european-companies, cost-conscious-teams | indie-developers, startups, hackathon-teams, side-projects |
| Founded | 1997 | 2020 |
| Cloud Servers | ✓ | ✗ |
| Dedicated Servers | ✓ | ✗ |
| Load Balancers | ✓ | ✗ |
| Block Storage | ✓ | ✗ |
| Object Storage | ✓ | ✗ |
| Firewalls | ✓ | ✗ |
| Private Networks | ✓ | ✗ |
| Instant Deploy | ✗ | ✓ |
| Databases | ✗ | ✓ |
| Cron Jobs | ✗ | ✓ |
| Private Networking | ✗ | ✓ |
| Auto Scaling | ✗ | ✓ |
| Github Integration | ✗ | ✓ |
| Environments | ✗ | ✓ |
✓ Hetzner Pros
- Dramatically cheaper than AWS, GCP, and Azure
- Excellent price-to-performance ratio
- European data centers with strong GDPR compliance
- Simple and transparent pricing
✗ Hetzner Cons
- Fewer managed services than hyperscalers
- Limited regions (Europe and US East only)
- Less ecosystem of integrated services
✓ Railway Pros
- Deploy anything in seconds (Docker, Node, Python, Go)
- Instant Postgres, Redis, MySQL provisioning
- Usage-based pricing — pay only for what you use
- Beautiful dashboard with real-time logs
✗ Railway Cons
- Can get expensive for high-traffic apps unexpectedly
- Limited regions compared to AWS/GCP
- Less enterprise features than larger clouds
The Verdict
Hetzner is built for startups and indie hackers, with a focus on cloud-servers and dedicated-servers. Railway targets indie developers and startups and leads with instant-deploy and databases.
Pricing is close: Hetzner starts at $3.79/mo versus $5/mo for Railway — not a deciding factor on its own.
Railway has a free plan, which gives it a meaningful edge for individuals and small teams exploring their options. Hetzner requires a paid subscription from day one.
Both tools are a solid fit for startups — in those cases, the decision often comes down to workflow style and how your team prefers to organize work.
This is a genuinely close comparison. If you can, sign up for both free trials (where available) and run a one-week test with your actual team tasks before deciding.