Cloudways vs Railway (2026)
Pricing, features and who each one is for, checked against both vendors' pricing pages in November 2026.
Quick verdict: Both are hosting & deploy, so this is a direct choice. Railway is cheaper to start (from $5/mo). Pick Cloudways for hosting for AI-built apps and sites, cheap and free AI coding tools. Pick Railway for hosting for AI-built apps and sites, professional developers.
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Side by side
| Cloudways | Railway | |
|---|---|---|
| Type | Managed cloud hosting | App and database hosting |
| Made by | DigitalOcean | Railway |
| Free tier | Yes | Yes |
| Starts at | From $11/mo | From $5/mo |
| Plans | Flexible from $11/mo (DigitalOcean 2GB); Velocity Node.js from $20/mo; Autonomous WordPress from $99/mo; AI agent hosting from $9.99/mo; 5-day free trial, no card | Free trial with $5 credits, then $1/mo; Hobby $5 minimum usage; Pro $20 minimum usage; billed per second for CPU, memory and storage |
| Open source | No | No |
| Runs in | Web | Web, CLI |
Cloudways strengths
- Pick your cloud provider
- Unlimited apps per server
- Free trial without a credit card
Railway strengths
- Usage-based, no overprovisioning
- Deploy any open-source database
- Sandboxes for agents and untrusted code
Cloudways drawbacks
- More server choices to make
- Add-ons like advanced support cost extra
Railway drawbacks
- Bills vary with usage
- Free plan is very limited after the trial