Migrate from Railway to HostStack
EU-hosted Railway alternative. Same per-second billing and zero-config deploys, with predictable invoices and your data in Germany or Finland.
Railway is fast and friendly, but it bills in USD, hosts primarily in the US, and the egress + sleep policies bite once you have real users. HostStack offers the same one-click deploy and managed-resources story with EU residency, no egress fees, and a free tier that doesn’t auto-suspend after $5.
Why switch from Railway?
- EU data residency by default. Compute and data in Germany / Finland — verified, not opaque.
- No usage-credit ceiling that suspends your app — free Nano sleeps after 60 min of inactivity and wakes on first request (<100 ms cold start).
- GDPR Article 28 DPA + EU VAT invoices automatic at signup.
- Flat 1¢/GB bandwidth — no surprise egress on busy days.
- Managed MongoDB, MySQL, plus the usual Postgres / Redis / S3.
- Open hoststack.yaml config in your repo. No vendor-lock GraphQL UI required to inspect your services.
- CLI, SDK, and MCP server — Railway’s CLI is great, ours matches it and adds MCP for Claude / Cursor.
Price comparison
| Resource | Railway | HostStack | Comparison |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hobby web service (always-on) | $5/mo Hobby (usage-capped at $5) | €1/mo Pico (or free Nano) | Up to 60% |
| Production web service | ~$20/mo (1 vCPU / 1 GB) | €29/mo Pro Standard (4 vCPU / 8 GB) | ~4× resources for ~50% more |
| Managed Postgres (1GB) | ~$5/mo (usage-based) | €4/mo Micro | ~10% |
| Bandwidth (100GB egress) | $10 (10¢/GB) | €1 (1¢/GB) | ~90% |
Prices as of 2026-05-30. Always check current pricing on each provider before deciding.
Code migration
Before (Railway)
# railway.toml
[build]
builder = "NIXPACKS"
buildCommand = "bun install && bun run build"
[deploy]
startCommand = "bun run start"
healthcheckPath = "/health"
restartPolicyType = "ON_FAILURE"After (HostStack)
# hoststack.yaml
services:
- name: my-api
type: web
runtime: bun
build: bun install && bun run build
start: bun run start
healthCheck:
path: /health
plan: pro-standard
databases:
- name: my-db
engine: postgres
plan: microFeature comparison
| Feature | Railway | HostStack |
|---|---|---|
| Git push deploys | Yes | Yes |
| Dockerfile + Nixpacks | Yes | Yes (Dockerfile + CNB + native runtimes) |
| Free tier | $5/mo credit, auto-suspends | Yes — Nano + Starter Postgres + cron + preview |
| Managed databases | Postgres, MySQL, MongoDB, Redis | Postgres, MySQL, MongoDB, Redis, S3 |
| Data residency | US + EU (Belgium) | Germany + Finland (EU only, named regions) |
| Egress pricing | 10¢/GB | 1¢/GB |
| Cron jobs | Yes | Yes, 1 free per project |
| Preview environments | PR Environments | Native, 1 free per project |
| EU VAT invoices | No | Yes (Stripe Tax) |
| DPA signed automatically | On request | At signup |
Migration gotchas
Railway’s "Reference Variables" → HostStack env-groups + sibling URL injection.
HostStack auto-injects sibling-service URLs into each environment (e.g. API_URL pointing at your sibling api service). For cross-service secrets, use env groups to share values across multiple services.
Railway’s per-second billing → HostStack per-hour reconciler.
HostStack reconciles usage hourly with Stripe — the practical difference for a typical workload is rounding cents. Both providers are pay-as-you-go.
Migration steps
- 1Sign up at hoststack.dev. Connect GitHub and import your Railway repo.
- 2Translate railway.toml / nixpacks.toml to hoststack.yaml. Nixpacks builders translate to our Bun / Node / Python / Go / Rust runtimes or a plain Dockerfile.
- 3Export Railway environment variables (railway variables --json) and bulk-import them via the dashboard or CLI.
- 4Take a logical backup of your Railway Postgres / MySQL / MongoDB and restore it into the HostStack equivalent.
- 5Deploy. HostStack issues a free SSL cert and gives you a *.hoststack.dev URL immediately.
- 6Update DNS for any custom domains. Decommission the Railway service once traffic is flowing cleanly.
Frequently asked questions
Do you support Nixpacks?
We don’t use Nixpacks directly, but we support every runtime Nixpacks covers (Bun, Node, Python, Go, Rust, Ruby, Java, Elixir) as a native build path, plus Dockerfile, plus Cloud Native Buildpacks. The vast majority of Railway projects build on HostStack with zero config changes.
Can I migrate a Railway project that uses multiple services?
Yes. Each Railway service becomes a HostStack service inside the same project. Sibling-service URLs are auto-injected as environment variables, so cross-service calls keep working.
How does HostStack compare on cold starts?
Paid services are always-on, no cold start. Free-tier Nano services sleep after 60 minutes of inactivity and wake on the first request — wake time is typically under 100 ms via a Traefik forwardAuth handshake to our agent.