Railway alternative for PHP hosting
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fortrabbit vs Railway.
fortrabbit is a Railway alternative — PHP-focused hosting with predictable pricing, no usage-meter surprises, and EU data residency.
Railway alternative for PHP at a glance
fortrabbit is a managed PaaS built exclusively for PHP. Railway is a polyglot deployment platform — a modern take on Heroku that runs PHP, Python, Ruby, Node, and more via buildpacks and containers. The UI is slick, but pricing is usage-based and can surprise at scale, and PHP is just one supported runtime among many.
If you're hosting PHP — Laravel, Symfony, Statamic, Craft CMS, Kirby, or plain PHP — fortrabbit gives you a focused environment: tuned PHP runtime, integrated MySQL, atomic deploys, persistent storage, and EU data residency. Pricing is per-app and predictable; no per-second metering. Plans start at €2.50 per month; the trial doesn't require a credit card.
Railway vs fortrabbit — feature comparison
| Feature | Railway | fortrabbit |
|---|---|---|
| Focus | Polyglot, buildpacks | PHP only |
| Deployment | git + Dockerfile | git push |
| Managed MySQL | As a service | Native |
| Managed Postgres | Yes | — |
| File storage | Paid volumes | Persistent app storage |
| SSH access | Limited | Full SFTP + SSH |
| Region | Global | EU (Germany) |
| Pricing model | Usage-based per-second | Per-app, monthly |
| Free tier | $5 trial credit | 30-day trial, no card |
| Support | Community, paid fast | Human chat, all plans |
| Company | Venture-backed | Independent, bootstrapped |
Pricing comparison
| Use case | Railway | fortrabbit |
|---|---|---|
| Small site / dev | Hobby $5 base + usage ≈ $10–$20 / mo | €5 / mo |
| Production app | Pro $20 base + compute + DB ≈ $50–$100 / mo | €30 / mo |
| Scaled app | Pro tier with sustained usage ≈ $150+ / mo | €60–€120 / mo depending on tier |
Numbers are illustrative — Railway's usage-based billing varies a lot with traffic, compute time, and add-ons. See fortrabbit pricing for the current matrix.
Migrating from Railway to fortrabbit
- Provision the app on fortrabbit. Pick a region (EU) and a plan. The free trial is enough to validate the move.
- Add the MySQL component. If you ran MySQL on Railway, take a
mysqldumpand import via fortrabbit's SSH tunnel — see MySQL import guide. If you used Postgres, plan a schema port. - Connect your git provider. Install the fortrabbit GitHub App (or connect GitLab / Bitbucket) and link your existing repo to the new fortrabbit app — see deployment intro. Pushes to your branch trigger an automatic deploy; Composer install runs as part of it.
- Drop the Dockerfile. fortrabbit deploys PHP source directly; no container image to maintain.
- Move environment variables. Railway variables map 1:1 to fortrabbit env vars — set in the dashboard or via the CLI.
- Move volumes. rsync from Railway volumes into your fortrabbit app's persistent storage via SFTP / SSH.
- Cut over DNS. Add the domain in the fortrabbit dashboard, update the CNAME, and watch the certificate issue automatically via Let's Encrypt.
Why teams switch
- Predictable bills. Per-app monthly pricing, no per-second compute math.
- PHP-first ergonomics. Composer, OPcache, PHP version pinning, integrated MySQL.
- Owner-run support. You talk to the engineers who run the platform.
- No buildpacks, no Dockerfile. Push PHP source, get a running app.
For background on Railway itself, see our hosting guide entry.
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