Hosting comparisons, without the sales pitch
These pages compare two platforms that are not us. We call a winner on every row, including the rows where the answer is not flattering to anyone. Every price is read off the vendor's own pricing page and dated, because they change without notice.
Want the direct comparison against InstaPods instead? Those live on our versus pages.
Vercel vs Netlify
Both charge $20/mo, but they meter opposite things. Vercel Pro is $20 per deploying seat plus usage. Netlify Pro is $20 for unlimited members plus a credit pool. Solo developer on Next.js: Vercel. Team of three or more on any other framework: Netlify is materially cheaper. Neither gives you a server.
Prices verified 2026-08-06Railway vs Render
Render is cheaper for a steady always-on service: $7/mo Starter versus about $30/mo on Railway for 1 vCPU and 1 GB running all month. Railway is cheaper for bursty or mostly-idle workloads because it meters per second. Railway has the better developer experience; Render has the more predictable invoice.
Prices verified 2026-08-06Coolify vs Dokploy
Coolify wins on openness and community: 60,167 GitHub stars and a clean Apache 2.0 license with no carve-out. Dokploy wins on price shape and clustering: $4.50/mo per server on cloud versus Coolify's $5 base for two servers, plus native Docker Swarm. Both leave you as the sysadmin of the box underneath.
Prices verified 2026-08-06Fly.io vs Railway
Fly.io is cheaper for small always-on workloads: a shared-cpu-1x machine with 256 MB is $2.43/mo, versus roughly $30/mo on Railway for 1 vCPU and 1 GB. Railway has the better developer experience and cheaper databases. Fly wins on multi-region and price; Railway wins on how little you have to think.
Prices verified 2026-08-06Replit vs Lovable
Both are $25/month at the entry paid tier, and they meter different things. Lovable Pro covers hosting out of the grant included in your plan for a small app, and its generated React interfaces are the best-looking in this category. Replit Core is $25/mo for $25 of credits, and keeping an app online is billed separately, from $15/mo for a shared Reserved VM to $35/mo for a dedicated 1 vCPU with 4 GB. Lovable is cheaper and easier if you are building a React frontend. Replit is the only one of the two that will run Python, Go or Rust, give you a shell, and let you pick the machine.
Prices verified 2026-08-07Or skip the platform layer entirely
Every platform on these pages sells you an abstraction over a server. InstaPods sells the server: real Linux, full root and SSH, flat pricing from $3/mo, and from the $7/mo Build plan a managed database included because it runs on the same machine as your app.
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