7 months ago
Hello, I'm new to railway, I have some difficulties to understand how the price works, I want to go live with an app with:
nextjs
express
postgres
At the beginning I don't expect a lot of traffic, I think the minum of resources should be fine to run this stack, for the 2 apps I think 1vcpu + 256mb of memory should be enough, maybe the db will be a bit bigger but still I'll start with the bare minimum amount of resources, how much am I going to spend with this configuration? I can't predict the costs looking at the pricing page in your website
many thanks
8 Replies
also, is there a way to cap the costs and get alerts when a particular price is reached?
7 months ago
Hello there.
The costs in Railway are calculated based on used resources, but there are some minimum values (according to subscription plan).
Here's an estimate of costs according with your usage estimate:
- CPU: (1 vCPU) x (20 USD per GB / Mo) = 20 USD / Mo
- RAM: (0.25 GB) x (10 USD per GB / Mo) = 2.5 USD / Mo
You didn't provide information about disk usage, but how you mentioned you didn't expect a lot of traffic, let's assume that you db will consume around 350 MB
- DISK: (0.34 GB) x (0.15 USD per GB / Mo) = 0.05 USD / Mo
The Egress have a cost too, but honestly, it's probably similar to Disk cost.
Total estimate: 22.6 USD / Mo
So, the next step is to decide which plan you will subscribe. If you choose Hobby plan, then you have a minimum payment of 5 USD, but this will not add to your costs. Here's some examples to make it clearer:
a) Hobby Plan | usage 4.50 USD | You bill is 5.00 USD
b) Hobby Plan | usage 22.6 USD | You bill is 22.6 USD
Just a reminder: you'll pay for resources you actually used, so if you deploy a service with 1vCPU allowed, doesn't necessarily mean that service will use 1vCPU fulltime.
Now about your last question:
It's not possible to cap the costs, but it's possible to set alert when a price is reached.
7 months ago
Because resources on Railway are dynamically allocated, it's not possible to effectively estimate your app's costs without hosting the services first.
It is highly unlikely that any of your services will use the listed resources consistently.
On Railway, you are only charged for the resources you use, so it's very likely that your services will use significantly less than 1vCPU on average across a month. For example, your usage could spike to 2vCPU if you receive a lot of traffic at once, but on average your usage could be significantly less.
The calculations above assume constant usage of the resources stated, which will not be the case. The only way to get an accurate estimate is to host your services for 2-3 days with a reasonable amount of traffic, then Railway will provide an estimate.
As for your last question, the above answer is incorrect. It is possible to set a usage limit. https://docs.railway.com/reference/usage-limits
ok thank you! so in theory if for example I'll push the full stack and nobody use it (just me for testing) the costs should be really low, I'll give it try
one more question, can I add all the service using the free trial? or the free trial allow only a db?
