Railway is a language-agnostic deployment platform, a modern take on Heroku. It works for PHP, Python, Ruby, Node.js, Java and more. You get service provisioning through a futuristic looking web UI. For those who pay a bit more to run diverse workloads on polyglot stacks, Railway, Render or Fly.io may be worth considering.

Why not Railway?

The bill is metered by the second: $20 per vCPU and $10 per GB of memory a month, plus egress, on top of the $5 Hobby or $20 Pro plan. Sounds fair. Now remember how PHP-FPM works: it holds its memory whether a request comes in or not. So the meter runs at 3 a.m. too, and the real number arrives when the month is over. How do you quote hosting to a client on that?

Why fortrabbit

fortrabbit is purpose-built for PHP websites and web applications. This focus makes a difference in practice:

No config guesswork. A curated stack tuned for PHP, web server pre-configured, extensions ready.
No container definitions. Deploy with git push, get logs immediately, manage everything from a clean dashboard.
Predictable pricing. Components with a monthly price. Month two looks like month one.
Zoom in on your software. Laravel, Craft CMS, Kirby, Statamic: install guides and tuned defaults for each.
Human support. Get help from the people who run the platform. See our support features.
Over a decade of experience. Serving PHP developers since 2012. See our history.

Railway and fortrabbit

Feature	Railway	fortrabbit
Runtimes	Polyglot	PHP only
Deployment	Railpack or Dockerfile	git push, Composer
Databases	Services, any engine	MySQL component
File storage	Volumes	Persistent storage
Billing	Per second	Per component, arrears

Move from Railway

The services of a Railway project become the components of one fortrabbit app. The generic steps for domains, code, uploads and DNS are in the migration guide.

Railway	fortrabbit
Service built by Railpack or a Dockerfile	PHP component, Composer runs in the build
Pre-deploy command	Post-deploy commands, run once the new files are live
Second service with a worker start command	Worker job
Service with a cron schedule	Cron job
Service and shared variables	Environment variables
MySQL service	MySQL component, dump through the TCP proxy in `MYSQL_PUBLIC_URL`, import through an SSH tunnel
Volume	Persistent storage

fortrabbit runs MySQL only. An app on Railway Postgres switches its database to MySQL first.

Different by design #

Pay in arrears

Daily prorated, post-paid billing. No upfront payment, no yearly commitment.

Modular pricing

Pay per component and scale each one from xs to 2xl on its own.

No dark patterns

No vendor lock-in, no upselling, no misleading messages.

Humans in support

Eye-level developer chat over the support bubble. No sales calls.

Developer-first

Git-push deploy, SSH access, bring your own code. No 1-click bloat.

Managed platform

A hardened, service-oriented PHP stack. Deploy code, skip the server admin.

Frequently asked #

Is fortrabbit billed by usage like Railway?

No - Each app is a set of components with a monthly price, billed in arrears. There is no per-second compute meter and no egress line.

Can the bill be capped?

Yes

Yes - Pick a plan and leave autoscaling off, and the invoice is the plan price. No setup fees, no annual commitment.

What about Postgres or Redis?

Not here

Not here - fortrabbit ships MySQL. An app that depends on Postgres needs a schema port before it moves.

What customers say #

Having fortrabbit is like having a dedicated DevOps engineer on the team, taking care of the infrastructure so we can focus on writing code. We've used many PaaS providers, but none come close to fortrabbit's mix of features, reliability, predictable and fair pricing, and fast, genuinely helpful support. Their service has been rock solid, giving us the confidence that our apps are in good hands.

Len van Essen

CTO at Fitwinkel

2026 — Direct feedback

Unmatched performances and ease-of-configure. I really like what fortrabbit is doing for the modern PHP hosting ecosystem, and I'd suggest anyone to have a try with them.

Federico Magnani

CTO at glueglue

2026 — Direct feedback

Built by

Built with

Built what

Built how

# About Railway

# Why not Railway?

# Why fortrabbit

# Railway and fortrabbit

# Move from Railway