Fly.io
Run small full-stack apps in dozens of regions for genuinely low cost — when it works.
Fly's pitch is "Heroku, but you can run real Docker images, in 35 regions." When it works, it's magic — deploy a Phoenix or Rails app to Frankfurt and São Paulo with one command. Their free tier supports a 24/7 hobby app at zero cost.
The caveat is operational reliability. Through 2023–2024 they had a series of multi-day incidents on infrastructure they admitted were under-invested. They've publicly committed to fixing it, with visible progress in 2025. For side projects and prototypes, Fly is excellent. For a paid SaaS, set up active monitoring and have an exit plan; many indie devs do.
Pros & cons
- + 35+ regions, deploy multi-region with one command
- + Run any Docker image — no platform-specific buildpacks
- + Generous always-free tier (3 small machines)
- + Postgres-by-default option (Managed Postgres), with global replication
- − Reliability has been bumpy across 2023–2025; status page tells the story
- − Support is community-first — paid support tiers exist but are light
- − Some primitives (volumes, secrets) have rough edges that bite production apps
- − Pricing on machines beyond the free tier accumulates fast at scale
Plans & pricing
| Plan | Price | CPU | RAM | Disk | Bandwidth |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free (3× shared-cpu-1x) | Free | 1 vCPU | 0.25 GB | 3 GB | 160 GB |
| shared-cpu-1x 1 GB | $7/mo | 1 vCPU shared | 1 GB | 10 GB | 160 GB |
| performance-2x | $62/mo | 2 vCPU dedicated | 4 GB | — GB | 160 GB |
Free tier: 3 shared-cpu-1x VMs (256MB RAM each), 3GB volume, 160GB egress
Features at a glance
Fly.io head-to-head
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