Railway vs Coolify for Solo Developers

Quick Comparison

Railway Overview

Railway is a managed PaaS that takes the pain out of deploying full-stack apps. You push your code, and Railway's Nixpacks auto-detect your stack, build everything, and deploy. Need a database? Click a button. Need Redis? Another click. All your services live in one project with environment variables flowing between them automatically.

I've used Railway for multiple side projects and the onboarding experience is genuinely impressive. A Django app with Postgres and Redis was running in production in under 10 minutes. No Dockerfile, no Nginx configs, no SSH. The visual project graph that shows how your services connect is something I wish every platform had.

The pricing is straightforward. You pay $5/month base plus usage for compute and storage. For a typical solo developer project, you're looking at $7-15/month total. Predictable enough to not worry about surprise bills.

Coolify Overview

Coolify is the self-hosted alternative to platforms like Railway, Heroku, and Vercel. You install it on your own VPS, and it gives you a beautiful web dashboard to deploy applications, databases, and services. Think of it as running your own PaaS on a $5-10/month server.

The appeal is obvious. Instead of paying Railway's per-service fees, you pay once for a VPS and deploy as many apps as the server can handle. A single Hetzner or DigitalOcean box running Coolify can host 5-10 small projects comfortably. That's a massive cost advantage if you're running multiple side projects.

Coolify supports Docker, Docker Compose, Nixpacks, and even static sites. It handles SSL certificates through Let's Encrypt, manages databases, and provides one-click deploys from GitHub. The v4 release made the UI significantly better, and the project is actively maintained by a solo developer who genuinely cares about the product.

Key Differences

Managed vs. self-hosted. This is the fundamental split. Railway manages everything. Coolify gives you a management layer, but you're still responsible for the underlying server. If your VPS runs out of disk space at 2am, that's your problem with Coolify. With Railway, it's theirs.

Cost structure. Railway charges per service, per minute of compute, and per GB of storage. Coolify is free software, so you only pay for the VPS. If you're hosting one project, Railway is competitive. If you're hosting five or more, Coolify on a $20/month VPS is dramatically cheaper.

Setup time. Railway is ready in minutes. Coolify requires provisioning a VPS, running the install script, configuring DNS, and setting up your first project. It's not difficult, but it's 30-60 minutes versus 5 minutes. For someone who just wants to ship, that gap matters.

Reliability. Railway runs on managed infrastructure with redundancy and automatic failover. With Coolify, your apps are as reliable as your VPS provider and your own configuration. Railway also handles scaling automatically, while Coolify is limited to whatever your single server can handle unless you configure a multi-node setup.

Database management. Both handle databases well, but differently. Railway's one-click databases include automatic backups and connection string injection. Coolify deploys databases as Docker containers with backup scripts you can configure. Railway is more hands-off, Coolify gives you more control.

Ecosystem and integrations. Railway has a marketplace of templates and first-class integrations with common services. Coolify focuses on Docker compatibility, which means anything that runs in a container runs on Coolify. Different philosophies, both effective.

When to Choose Railway

• You want zero server management responsibilities
• Speed of deployment is your top priority
• You're hosting 1-2 projects and budget isn't tight
• You prefer a polished managed experience
• You don't want to think about server updates or security patches

When to Choose Coolify

• You're running multiple projects and want to minimize hosting costs
• You like having full control over your infrastructure
• You already have a VPS and want to maximize its value
• You're comfortable with basic server administration
• You want to avoid vendor lock-in completely

The Verdict

For solo developers who want the fastest path to production with zero ops work, Railway is the better choice. You trade money for time, and for most solo devs, time is the scarcer resource.

But if you're the kind of developer who runs 3-5 side projects and doesn't mind spending an afternoon setting things up, Coolify is a game-changer. The cost savings compound quickly. A $10/month Hetzner box running Coolify can replace $50-80/month worth of Railway services.

My recommendation: if you're deploying your first project and want to focus entirely on building, start with Railway. If you're already comfortable with servers and want to own your infrastructure, Coolify is the smarter long-term play.