Fly.io Alternative 2026: Pricing, Performance & Features

Raff wins on fixed monthly ceilings, $0 public egress, Docker Compose import, managed MySQL, and a visual app workflow. Fly.io wins on 18 global regions, machine-level control, Anycast routing, and flexible per-second resource billing. Choose Fly.io when global placement and infrastructure-level control are decisive; choose Raff when a bounded app bill and managed visual workflow matter more. Raff Apps Pro is $27.99/month for 2 vCPU and 4 GB, while Fly.io shared-cpu-2x with 4 GB ranges from about $21.40 to $34.56/month by region before storage and egress.

Raff Apps and Fly.io both deploy containerized applications without requiring a team to administer a traditional server, but they expose different levels of control. Raff packages services into fixed tiers from $3/month with $0 public egress and a spend cap enabled by default. Fly.io exposes Machines, volumes, networking, and regions as separately billed resources across 18 locations. Before comparing Fly.io alternatives, use Cloud VM vs App Platform: What Startups Should Know to confirm that a managed application platform is the right deployment model.

Fly.io vs Raff: which is right for you?

The choice is global infrastructure control versus a managed platform with tighter cost boundaries.

Raff is the clearer Fly.io alternative for teams that can operate in us-east and want the monthly application bill bounded before production traffic arrives. Fly.io is stronger when users are distributed globally, the team wants Machine-level control, or the application architecture depends on Anycast routing and multi-region placement.

Fly.io overview

Fly.io is a developer-focused public cloud built around Fly Machines. A Machine runs an application container with virtual-machine isolation, while flyctl, fly.toml, the Machines API, private networking, volumes, and Anycast routing expose more infrastructure control than a conventional push-to-deploy PaaS.

The platform currently lists 18 regions across North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, South America, and Africa. Applications can run in one or several regions, and Fly Proxy routes incoming traffic across the Anycast network. Machines and Fly Volumes remain tied to the regions where they are created.

Fly.io supports two scaling patterns:

• Autostop/autostart starts and stops existing Machines according to incoming traffic and configured concurrency.
• Metrics-based autoscaling can create, delete, start, or stop Machines using metrics selected by the team.

Stopped or suspended Machines do not incur CPU and RAM charges, although their root file systems and any provisioned volumes can continue to generate storage charges. This model can reduce compute cost for sporadic workloads, but it requires the team to understand Machine state, minimum-running settings, regional capacity, and the difference between stopping capacity and creating new capacity.

The current Fly.io trial provides 2 total Machine hours or 7 days of access, whichever comes first. It allows up to 10 Machines, 20 GB of volume storage, 2 vCPUs per Machine, and 4 GB of memory per Machine. It is an evaluation window rather than a permanent free production tier.

Fly.io's strongest advantages are its 18-region footprint, Anycast network, CLI and API control, flexible Machine sizing, regional private networking, and the ability to run applications close to users. Its trade-off is that compute, persistent storage, snapshots, IP addresses, egress, managed databases, and paid support can appear as separate invoice lines.

Raff overview

Raff Apps is Raff's managed application platform for deploying source code and containers without managing the operating system. It supports GitHub push-to-deploy, Dockerfiles, existing container images, automatic buildpacks, and full Docker Compose imports.

The platform covers:

• Public web services
• Private services
• Long-running workers
• Timezone-aware cron jobs
• One-off jobs
• Pull-request preview environments
• Persistent volumes
• Managed PostgreSQL, MySQL, and Valkey
• Private service bindings
• Object-storage connections
• Immutable revisions and one-click rollback
• Scale-to-zero behavior

Raff Apps publishes a monthly ceiling for each service and prorates runtime by the second. The current tiers are:

The product decision behind Raff Apps is deliberate: cost protection should exist before the first production traffic spike. Every service has a visible monthly ceiling, public egress is priced at $0, team seats add $0, and the spend cap starts enabled rather than requiring a team to configure it later.

Raff reports 3,000+ customers and 15,000+ production VMs, with a 99.9% uptime SLA, a 4.4/5 Trustpilot rating, and a 4.6/5 G2 rating. Raff is geographically narrower than Fly.io. Its advantage is a compact cloud workflow with fixed resource tiers, visual deployment, managed services, and direct support.

Fly.io pricing vs Raff pricing

Fly.io and Raff both prorate application compute, but the pricing structures answer different questions.

Raff asks the team to select a service tier. The published monthly amount is the maximum compute charge for one continuously running instance, while scale-to-zero can reduce actual runtime cost. Public egress, workspace access, and team seats add $0.

Fly.io prices a running Machine from a named CPU and memory preset, then adds separately priced resources when used. Machine prices vary by region. The official pricing tables show shared-cpu-1x with 512 MB at roughly $3.19–$5.16/month and shared-cpu-2x with 4 GB at roughly $21.40–$34.56/month across listed regions.

The closest useful comparison is resource allocation and billing structure, not proof that the CPU classes deliver identical application performance.

Fly.io also charges for resources that do not appear inside its running-Machine line:

• Fly Volumes: $0.15 per provisioned GB-month
• Volume snapshots: $0.08 per stored GB-month, with the first 10 GB free each month
• Dedicated IPv4: $2/month
• Static egress IP pair: about $3.60/month
• Internet egress: $0.02, $0.04, or $0.12 per GB by region group
• Cross-region private transfer: $0.006, $0.015, or $0.05 per GB by region group
• Managed Postgres: starts at $38/month plus $0.28 per provisioned GB-month

Fly.io offers 40% compute discounts through prepaid reservation blocks. Those blocks are region- and CPU-class-specific, paid annually, and provide monthly credits that do not roll over. They can improve Fly.io economics for stable workloads, but the standard on-demand price remains the fair comparison for teams avoiding annual commitments.

Fly.io pricing and feature details were checked against official Fly.io documentation on July 30, 2026. Raff pricing follows the current Raff rate card verified in July 2026.

Bandwidth and transfer policy

Raff Apps prices public egress at $0. Application responses, downloads, API traffic, and other public outbound data do not create an app-platform per-GB charge.

Fly.io meters outbound transfer by region group:

At 1 TB, using 1 TB = 1,024 GB, Fly.io internet egress is approximately $20.48 from North America or Europe, $40.96 from Asia-Pacific, Oceania, or South America, and $122.88 from Africa or India. Those amounts exclude Machine compute, volumes, snapshots, databases, support, and taxes.

Inbound traffic is free on Fly.io. Same-region transfer between apps or Machines is also free for organizations using granular transfer rates. Cross-region designs need more care because a globally distributed application can create both public egress and private inter-region transfer.

Fly.io is competitive for teams that need global placement and can keep most service communication inside each region. Raff is easier to forecast for public-transfer-heavy applications because the public egress line remains $0 regardless of traffic volume.

Feature comparison: Fly.io vs Raff

Compute and service types

Deployment and portability

Networking and regions

Data and storage

Scaling and deployment safety

Pricing and support

Trust and operations

Fly.io has the broader geography and deeper Machine-level control. Raff differentiates through fixed service ceilings, $0 public egress, full Docker Compose import, first-party MySQL and Valkey options, and an included support relationship.

Features and reliability: Raff vs Fly.io

This comparison does not declare a performance winner. Raff and Fly.io have no controlled head-to-head test using the same container, CPU class, region, storage path, database location, concurrency profile, and repeated measurement window. Published CPU and memory values support capacity planning, but they do not prove latency or throughput.

Application performance

Fly.io gives experienced teams more knobs that can improve latency: regional Machine placement, Anycast routing, shared or performance CPUs, adjustable memory, and multiple Machines close to users. Those choices can also create inconsistent results when regions, CPU classes, or state placement differ.

Raff reduces the number of decisions. Teams select a service tier, connect the repository or container, and use one public region. This is easier to operate, but Raff cannot match Fly.io's current global placement for users far from us-east.

A credible comparison should deploy the same image and measure:

• Cold and warm request latency
• P95 and P99 response times
• Sustained requests per second
• Worker throughput
• Build and deployment duration
• Database round-trip latency
• Recovery from failed health checks
• Scale-up and scale-down behavior

Until those results exist, product capabilities and total bill structure are the defensible comparison.

Machine scaling behavior

Fly Proxy autostop/autostart starts and stops existing Machines. It does not create new Machines. The team must provision the pool that represents peak capacity, configure concurrency limits, and choose how many Machines remain active in the primary region.

Fly.io also provides a metrics-based autoscaler that can create and delete Machines. This is more configurable than a simple scale-to-zero switch, but it adds another application and scaling policy to operate.

Raff Apps presents scaling inside the managed service workflow. It is the better fit when the team wants fewer infrastructure decisions. Fly.io is better when the team wants to program and inspect the scaling mechanics.

Stateful reliability

Fly Volumes are local NVMe storage attached to the same physical server as a Machine. They are regional and hardware-tied. New volumes receive automatic daily snapshots with five days of retention by default, but snapshots are incremental backups rather than globally writable shared storage.

A Fly.io application that needs higher state availability must replicate at the application or database layer. Moving a Machine does not make its local volume globally available. This is an important architectural constraint for multi-region systems.

Raff Apps also treats persistent state as a separate design decision. Production relational data should use Raff Managed Databases when automated backups, private connections, and database operations matter more than keeping files inside the application service.

Managed database reliability

Fly.io Managed Postgres includes high availability, automatic failover, backups and recovery, connection pooling, monitoring, and 24/7 incident response. The Basic plan starts at $38/month for Shared-2x and 1 GB RAM, plus $0.28 per provisioned GB-month of storage.

Fly.io currently documents customer-facing alerting, migration tools, broader third-party extensions, and security-patch and version-upgrade workflows as still under development. Raff offers PostgreSQL, MySQL, and Valkey as first-party managed engine choices inside the wider platform.

Service-level commitments

Fly.io publishes a 99.9% uptime commitment for Enterprise-plan customers. Community and smaller paid-support customers should not assume the Enterprise SLA applies automatically.

Raff publishes a 99.9% uptime SLA for its platform. On both providers, application reliability still requires health checks, backups, tested restores, external monitoring, retries, and a clear state-recovery plan.

When you should choose Fly.io over Raff

Choose Fly.io when:

• Global deployment is required — Fly.io currently lists 18 regions; Raff Apps exposes one public us-east region.
• Machine-level control matters — shared and performance CPU classes, adjustable memory, APIs, and fly.toml expose infrastructure behavior directly.
• Anycast routing is part of the design — Fly Proxy can route users toward Machines across the global network.
• A workload is highly sporadic — stopped or suspended Machines do not incur CPU and RAM charges.
• You want programmable autoscaling — metrics-based scaling can create, delete, start, or stop Machines.
• Regional private networks are required — Fly.io supports organization private networking and cross-region connectivity.
• A 40% reservation discount is acceptable — prepaid region-specific compute blocks can reduce stable usage cost.
• The team already operates Fly.io configuration — a mature fly.toml, deployment process, and regional architecture may cost more to replace than to keep.

Fly.io is also the stronger option for latency-sensitive products with users across several continents, provided the team can design data placement and cross-region behavior correctly.

When you should choose Raff over Fly.io

Choose Raff Apps when:

• A fixed monthly ceiling matters — every service tier publishes the maximum continuously running compute charge.
• Public egress is meaningful — Raff prices app-platform public egress at $0, while Fly.io charges $0.02–$0.12/GB by region group.
• Docker Compose already describes the stack — Raff imports connected services onto one visual canvas.
• Managed MySQL is required — Raff provides MySQL alongside PostgreSQL and Valkey.
• Support should not be a separate subscription — Fly.io paid support starts at $29/month; Raff includes direct cloud support.
• A default spend cap is important — Raff enables cost protection before the service is deployed.
• The team prefers a visual workflow — GitHub, buildpacks, Dockerfiles, images, variables, networking, and revisions are managed in one interface.
• One provider should cover apps and infrastructure — Raff connects Apps with VMs, managed databases, object storage, private networking, and Kubernetes.

For adjacent decisions, compare Render and Raff or review Raff vs Railway.

:::cluster

Migrating from Fly.io to Raff

A Fly.io-to-Raff migration is a translation of Machine definitions, regional assumptions, persistent state, and network identity into managed services.

1. Inventory the Fly.io organization. Record every app, process group, Machine, CPU and memory size, region, volume, secret, certificate, shared or dedicated IP, static egress IP, private-network dependency, Managed Postgres cluster, extension, and fly.toml file.
2. Map processes to Raff services. Move HTTP processes to web services, internal processes to private services, queue consumers to workers, scheduled tasks to cron jobs, and administrative commands to one-off jobs.
3. Choose the deployment path. Connect GitHub, deploy an existing image, use a Dockerfile, allow a buildpack to detect the runtime, or convert a multi-process local stack into Docker Compose for import.
4. Export persistent state. Use pg_dump and pg_restore for PostgreSQL. Archive or synchronize files from every Fly Volume before cutover. Move durable uploads to object storage where application instances need shared access.
5. Recreate configuration and test. Add environment variables, secrets, private bindings, health checks, domains, cron timezones, storage mounts, database credentials, and outbound allowlists. Validate on a temporary hostname and test backup restoration.
6. Cut over with rollback. Lower DNS TTL to 300 seconds, perform the final data sync, switch DNS and callbacks, monitor production, and retain the Fly.io deployment until the rollback window closes.

Operational gotchas:

• fly.toml is provider-specific. Raff does not import it directly. Translate processes, health checks, ports, concurrency, mount points, and scaling rules.
• Fly Volumes are region- and hardware-tied. Export the files from the mounted filesystem; do not treat a Fly snapshot as a portable cross-provider image.
• Anycast and network identities change. Update DNS, webhooks, OAuth callbacks, payment providers, database allowlists, SMTP services, and outbound-IP rules.
• Autostop behavior is not identical. Record auto_stop_machines, auto_start_machines, concurrency limits, and min_machines_running before mapping scale-to-zero expectations.
• Managed Postgres is separate from the app. Deleting a Fly.io app does not delete its database, so decommission and billing checks must cover both resources.
• Multi-region architecture may need redesign. Raff's current public app region is us-east; consolidate regional services and state before migration.

The application container is usually portable. The migration risk sits in regional placement, Machine state, volume data, fly.toml behavior, private networking, and traffic cutover.

About Fly.io

<a href="https://fly.io/" rel="external noopener">Fly.io</a> is operated by Fly.io, Inc., a U.S. developer-focused public cloud company that says it has worked on the platform since 2017. Fly.io runs containerized applications as Fly Machines and connects them through a global Anycast network. Its public product surface includes Machines, volumes, private networking, Managed Postgres, Fly Kubernetes, APIs, and 18 application regions.

Fly.io's current terms identify Fly.io, Inc. as the contracting company and list a San Francisco contact address. The pricing, free-trial, region, volume, scaling, support, and Managed Postgres details in this comparison were checked against official Fly.io sources on July 30, 2026.

Conclusion: Fly.io or Raff?

The comparison resolves across five practical axes:

• Cost structure — Raff uses fixed monthly ceilings; Fly.io combines region-specific Machine usage with storage, egress, IP, database, and support charges.
• Matched 2 CPU / 4 GB shape — Raff Pro is $27.99; Fly.io shared-cpu-2x with 4 GB is about $21.40–$34.56 by region before add-ons.
• Bandwidth — Raff public egress is $0; Fly.io internet egress is $0.02–$0.12/GB by region group.
• Regions — Fly.io offers 18 application regions; Raff Apps currently uses one public us-east region.
• Control — Fly.io exposes Machines, APIs, networking, and autoscaling mechanics; Raff packages deployment into a managed visual workflow.

Choose Fly.io when global placement, Anycast routing, Machine-level control, or programmable scaling is essential. Choose Raff when us-east fits and the team values fixed ceilings, $0 public egress, Docker Compose import, first-party MySQL, and included direct support.

Raff supports 3,000+ customers and 15,000+ production VMs, with a 4.4/5 Trustpilot rating and a 4.6/5 G2 rating. Review Cloud VM vs App Platform before choosing the production deployment model.