Coolify vs Railway for Solo Developers

Quick Comparison

Coolify Overview

Coolify is the open-source, self-hosted alternative to platforms like Vercel, Netlify, and Railway. You install it on your own VPS (Hetzner, DigitalOcean, wherever), and it gives you a PaaS experience with a web dashboard, Git-based deployments, one-click databases, and SSL certificates.

The pitch is compelling: get Railway-like convenience without paying Railway prices, running everything on your own infrastructure. Deploy Docker containers, static sites, and databases through a clean web UI. Coolify handles Traefik for reverse proxy, Let's Encrypt for SSL, and Docker Compose for orchestration.

I set up Coolify on a Hetzner VPS and was deploying apps within 30 minutes. The interface is clean and functional. You connect your GitHub repos, configure build settings, and push to deploy. Databases (PostgreSQL, MySQL, Redis, MongoDB) deploy with a click. For a self-hosted solution, the polish is impressive.

Railway Overview

Railway is the managed PaaS that handles everything for you. No servers to provision, no Docker to configure, no SSL to set up. Push code to GitHub, and Railway builds, deploys, and runs your application. Add databases with a click. See logs, metrics, and costs in a unified dashboard.

Railway's strength is elimination of DevOps entirely. Nixpacks auto-detect your project type and build without a Dockerfile. Environment variables wire between services automatically. Scaling happens without you thinking about servers. For a solo developer who wants to focus purely on code, Railway removes every infrastructure concern.

The tradeoff is cost. Railway charges $5/month as a base plus compute and storage usage. A typical full-stack app with a database runs $7-15/month. That's more than running the same app on a $4 Hetzner VPS with Coolify installed.

Key Differences

Cost structure. This is the fundamental difference. Coolify is free software you run on your own server. A Hetzner CX22 costs EUR 3.79/month. So your total hosting cost for unlimited apps and databases is under $5/month. Railway charges $5/month base plus per-service compute, which typically totals $10-20/month for a full-stack app. Over a year, the savings with Coolify are significant.

Ops responsibility. Railway handles everything: server updates, security patches, backups, scaling, and monitoring. With Coolify, that's all on you. Server goes down at 3am? Your problem. Security vulnerability in the OS? You patch it. Database needs backups? You configure them. The cost savings come with real ops responsibility.

Setup time. Railway is instant. Sign up, connect a repo, deploy. Coolify requires provisioning a VPS, installing Coolify, configuring DNS, and then deploying your apps. The initial setup takes 30-60 minutes. After that, deploying new apps is quick through the Coolify dashboard, but Railway's zero-setup advantage is real.

Reliability. Railway runs on managed infrastructure with teams handling uptime, redundancy, and failover. Coolify runs on whatever server you put it on. A single VPS has no redundancy. If the server goes down, everything goes down. For hobby projects, that's acceptable. For production apps with paying users, Railway's managed reliability matters.

Scaling. Railway scales containers horizontally and vertically through the dashboard. Coolify scales by upgrading your server or adding more servers (multi-server support is available). Railway's scaling is more dynamic and requires no infrastructure knowledge. Coolify's scaling is more manual but gives you full control over resource allocation.

Ecosystem and integrations. Railway offers one-click templates for common stacks, integrated database provisioning, and automatic environment variable linking between services. Coolify offers similar features through its dashboard but the ecosystem is smaller and less polished. Railway feels more refined because it's a funded product with a larger team.

When to Choose Coolify

• You want to minimize hosting costs and have time for basic server management
• You already have a VPS (Hetzner, DigitalOcean) and want a PaaS layer on it
• You value owning your infrastructure and avoiding vendor lock-in
• You're comfortable with SSH, Docker, and basic Linux administration
• You're running hobby projects where some downtime is acceptable

When to Choose Railway

• You want zero DevOps and zero server management
• Getting to production as fast as possible is the priority
• You need reliable, managed infrastructure for production apps
• You don't want to think about security patches, backups, or server maintenance
• The $10-20/month cost is worth the time savings

The Verdict

This is fundamentally a time-vs-money decision. Coolify saves money by giving you PaaS convenience on cheap infrastructure. Railway saves time by eliminating all infrastructure concerns. Both are excellent choices, but they serve different priorities.

If you already manage servers and enjoy that control, Coolify on a Hetzner VPS is the best value in hosting. You get a full PaaS experience for under $5/month with no vendor lock-in.

If you'd rather spend $15/month and never think about servers, Railway is worth every penny. The time you save on ops work goes directly into building your product.

My recommendation: use Coolify for side projects and early-stage prototypes where budget matters most. Use Railway for production apps with paying users where reliability and speed matter more than hosting costs. Many solo developers use both, and that's a perfectly valid strategy.