Railway vs Kamal for Solo Developers

Quick Comparison

Railway Overview

Railway is a managed PaaS built for developers who want to ship without managing infrastructure. Push code, Railway handles the rest. Nixpacks auto-detect your language, builds run automatically, and databases deploy with a single click. The visual dashboard shows all your services and their connections in one place.

What makes Railway stand out for solo developers is the speed. I've gone from "git push" to a live production URL in under five minutes. Environment variables sync between services, logs stream in real time, and you never SSH into anything. It just works.

Pricing starts at $5/month plus usage-based compute and storage. For a typical solo dev project with one app and one database, expect to pay $7-15/month.

Kamal Overview

Kamal is a deployment tool created by the team behind Ruby on Rails. It deploys Docker containers to any server you can SSH into. No platform lock-in, no proprietary infrastructure. You bring your own server, Kamal handles the deployment pipeline.

The workflow is straightforward. You define your app in a deploy.yml config, run kamal setup to bootstrap your server, and then kamal deploy to push updates. Under the hood, Kamal builds your Docker image, pushes it to a registry, SSHes into your server, and swaps the running container with zero downtime using Traefik as a reverse proxy.

Kamal 2 simplified a lot of the rough edges from version 1. The config is cleaner, accessories (databases, Redis) are better supported, and the Kamal proxy replaced Traefik with something lighter. It's not as polished as a full PaaS, but it gives you a deployment workflow that's surprisingly smooth for what amounts to "SSH and run Docker."

Key Differences

Abstraction level. Railway abstracts away servers entirely. You never think about machines, Docker, or SSH. Kamal is a thin layer over Docker and SSH. You need to provision your own server, manage its security, and handle updates. Railway is "deploy and forget," Kamal is "deploy with control."

Cost model. Railway charges for platform usage on top of infrastructure. Kamal is free software, so you only pay for the server. A $5/month Hetzner VPS running Kamal can host the same app that costs $15/month on Railway. Over a year, that adds up.

Setup complexity. Railway takes minutes. Kamal requires a working Docker setup, a container registry (Docker Hub or GitHub Container Registry), a VPS, and a configured deploy.yml. First-time setup is probably a 1-2 hour investment. Subsequent deploys are a single command, though.

Database management. Railway's databases are managed. Backups, connection pooling, and scaling are handled for you. With Kamal, you deploy databases as Docker accessories. You're responsible for backups, updates, and monitoring. This is fine for a side project but can become a headache at scale.

Scaling. Railway scales automatically based on demand. Kamal deploys to specific servers you define. If you need more capacity, you add servers to your config and redeploy. It's manual but predictable.

Zero downtime deploys. Both support this. Railway does it automatically. Kamal achieves it through the Kamal proxy, which routes traffic to the new container before stopping the old one. In practice, both work well.

When to Choose Railway

• You want to deploy without managing any servers
• Speed of initial setup matters most
• You prefer a visual dashboard for managing services
• Database management should be hands-off
• You're willing to pay more for convenience

When to Choose Kamal

• You want full control over your infrastructure
• You already have servers or VPS credits to use
• Long-term cost savings matter more than setup convenience
• You're comfortable with Docker and basic server administration
• You want zero vendor lock-in for your deployment pipeline

The Verdict

Railway and Kamal solve the same problem from opposite directions. Railway says "don't think about servers." Kamal says "your servers, your way."

For most solo developers starting a new project, Railway is the faster path to production. The time you save on infrastructure work is time you spend building features. And when you're trying to validate an idea or ship an MVP, speed matters more than cost optimization.

Kamal makes more sense when you've already got servers running, you're comfortable with Docker, and you want to keep costs predictable. It's also the better choice if you want to avoid being tied to any specific platform. Your deploy.yml works with any VPS provider, so you can switch from Hetzner to DigitalOcean without changing a thing.

My take: start with Railway to validate and ship fast. If your project grows and hosting costs start to matter, migrate to Kamal with a cheap VPS. The Docker containerization that Kamal requires actually makes migration easier, not harder.