# The metered rate versus the flat bill
DigitalOcean's cheapest real Droplet — 1 vCPU, 512MB RAM — runs $0.00595 an hour, about $4/month if left running continuously. Railway's Hobby plan, by contrast, is a flat $5/month. The structural difference is the same one this comparison has always been about: DigitalOcean charges per second of compute (with a $0.01 minimum charge per billing event, effective January 2026), while Railway charges a fixed monthly fee that includes a set amount of usage.
The resource ladder versus the all-inclusive box
| Provider | Tier | Hourly Price | ~Monthly Equivalent | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| DigitalOcean | Basic (1 vCPU, 512MB) | $0.00595/hr | ~$4.00/mo | Cheapest Droplet |
| DigitalOcean | CPU-Optimized (2 vCPU, 4GB) | $0.0625/hr | ~$42.00/mo | Compute-bound workloads |
| DigitalOcean | General Purpose (2 vCPU, 8GB) | $0.09375/hr | ~$63.00/mo | Balanced workloads |
| DigitalOcean | Memory-Optimized (2 vCPU, 16GB) | $0.125/hr | ~$84.00/mo | Memory-bound workloads |
| Railway | Hobby | — | $5/month flat | Includes a set usage credit |
| Railway | Pro | — | $20/month flat | Built for production teams |
DigitalOcean offers a granular selection of virtual machines, letting you pick the exact shape of compute your workload needs. If your application is CPU-bound, the CPU-Optimized Droplet starts at $0.0625/hr — roughly $42/month if run continuously. If it's memory-heavy, the Memory-Optimized Droplet starts at $0.125/hr, about $84/month. Because billing is per second (with that new $0.01 minimum per billing event), a workload that only runs intermittently can cost far less than the monthly-equivalent figures above — the reverse is also true for anything left running 24/7.
Railway simplifies this into two flat buckets. The $5/month Hobby plan is built for individual developers and bundles a set amount of usage into the flat fee. The $20/month Pro plan targets teams shipping to production. Unlike DigitalOcean's per-resource-type pricing, Railway doesn't itemize CPU, memory, or storage separately — you get one predictable number regardless of exactly how your app uses the underlying infrastructure.
The trade-off is genuinely about predictability versus optimization. Intermittent or spiky workloads — a cron job, a side project that mostly sits idle — can run for pennies a month on DigitalOcean's per-second billing, something no flat-rate plan can match. Steady, always-on workloads flip the math: Railway's flat $20/month Pro plan often undercuts running even the cheapest DigitalOcean Droplet continuously once you account for the $4-84/month equivalent range above, while removing the need to monitor usage at all.
Choose DigitalOcean if your workload is bursty and you want to pay only for the seconds you actually use. Choose Railway if you want one predictable line item and don't want to reason about hourly billing at all.
Pricing verified on 2026-09-16.