Is Hangar a Railway alternative?

Yes. Hangar covers the same job as Railway, deploying apps and databases from a Git repository with usage-based billing, and it builds apps with Railpack, the same open source builder Railway uses, so most projects move without changes to the code.

Will an app that builds on Railway build on Hangar?

In most cases, yes. Hangar's automatic builder is Railpack, the builder Railway created and uses. Apps that deploy from a Dockerfile build the same way on both.

How is Hangar's pricing different from Railway's?

The model is the same, a monthly subscription that becomes usage credit plus metered CPU, memory, storage and egress. The differences are in the rates, in the currency you are billed in and in spend limits you can set per organization and per project. Compare the current numbers on each pricing page.

Hangar vs Railway

An honest comparison of Hangar and Railway as deployment platforms, covering pricing model, builds, databases, team features and what moving between them takes.

Hangar and Railway solve the same problem: you connect a repository and the platform builds it, runs it and bills you for what it used. If you know one, the other will feel familiar. This page lays out where they are alike, where they differ and when each is the better choice.

Facts about Railway below come from its public pricing page and documentation as of October 2026. Check railway.com for the current state.

At a glance

	Hangar	Railway
Deploy from Git	GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket, Gitea, any public Git URL	GitHub, plus CLI uploads
Default builder	Railpack	Railpack
Dockerfile builds	Yes	Yes
Prebuilt Docker images	Yes	Yes
Other builders	Nixpacks, Heroku buildpacks, Paketo buildpacks	Nixpacks (legacy)
Pricing model	Subscription that becomes usage credit, then metered usage	Subscription that becomes usage credit, then metered usage
Metered resources	CPU, memory, storage, egress	CPU, memory, volumes, egress
Preview per pull request	Yes	Yes
Managed databases	PostgreSQL, MySQL, MariaDB, MongoDB, Redis, libSQL	PostgreSQL, MySQL, MongoDB, Redis

Pricing

Both platforms use the same model, and it is a good one: your plan's monthly price turns into credit, usage is charged against it, and you pay the difference only if you go past it.

Railway's published plans in October 2026 are Free ($0, with $1 of usage a month), Hobby ($5, including $5 of usage) and Pro ($20, including $20 of usage), with usage at roughly $20 per vCPU and $10 per GB of memory a month, $0.15 per GB of volume and $0.05 per GB of egress.

Hangar's plans and per-resource rates are on the pricing page, which always shows the current numbers and has an estimator for your own workload. Three things differ beyond the rates:

Currency. Hangar bills in the currency of the country that issued your card where a local market exists, instead of in US dollars only.
Spend limits. You can cap spending for the whole organization and for each project, with emails at 50%, 80% and 100%, and choose whether hitting the limit only warns you or pauses the services.
Private traffic. Traffic between your services and their databases is never billed as egress.

Builds

Hangar's automatic builder is Railpack, the open source builder Railway created and uses. For you this means a repository that builds on Railway with no configuration builds the same way on Hangar.

Hangar pins the Railpack version per service, so builds stay reproducible until you decide to upgrade. It also offers Heroku and Paketo buildpacks, which helps when an app was written for a buildpack platform.

Databases

Both run databases as services next to your app, on a private network. Hangar adds MariaDB and libSQL to the list, and schedules backups from the dashboard to an S3-compatible destination.

Teams and enterprise

Both have organizations, members and roles. On Hangar's Enterprise contracts you also get SSO, custom roles, an organization-wide audit log, reserved capacity and your own brand and domain on the dashboard.

When Railway is the better choice

You want a large marketplace of community templates to start from.
You rely on a CLI for local development and deploys. Hangar is operated from the dashboard and by pushing to Git.
You need a mature platform with a long public track record. Hangar is newer.

When Hangar is the better choice

Your code lives on GitLab, Bitbucket or Gitea.
You want hard spend limits per project, not only alerts.
You would rather be billed in your local currency.
You need MariaDB, libSQL or scheduled database backups to your own storage.
You need enterprise controls such as SSO, audit log or a white-labelled dashboard.

Moving from Railway to Hangar

Create a project on Hangar and add a service from the same repository. If it built with Railpack or a Dockerfile on Railway, leave the build settings as they are.
Copy your variables. Railway's ${{service.VARIABLE}} references become environment variables on Hangar, referenced as ${{environment.KEY}}. See Environment variables.
Create the databases, restore a dump into each and update the connection URLs.
Add your domain on Hangar, then switch the DNS record once the new deploy is healthy.

The quickstart walks through the first deploy.