Cloud Hosting Pricing Compared — Railway vs Cloudways vs Hetzner vs Vultr vs RunPod (2026)
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Hosting pricing pages are designed to confuse you. Here’s the actual cost of running an AI app on each platform, including the hidden fees they don’t advertise.
Side-by-side pricing
Entry level (1-2 GB RAM)
| Platform | Advertised | Actual monthly cost | What’s included |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hetzner CX22 | €4.50/mo | €4.50/mo | 4GB RAM, 2 vCPU, 40GB. Nothing managed. |
| Railway | $5/mo | $8-15/mo | Usage-based. $5 base + CPU/memory. |
| Render | $7/mo | $7/mo | Fixed price per service. Spins down on free. |
| DigitalOcean | $6/mo | $6-12/mo | Droplet only. Database extra ($15/mo). |
| Vultr | $6/mo | $6/mo | Similar to DO. Global locations. |
| IONOS VPS | €1/mo | €1-6/mo | Cheapest entry. NVMe SSD. EU data centers. |
| Cloudways | $14/mo | $14/mo | Managed DO server. SSL, backups, firewall included. |
Production level (4-8 GB RAM)
| Platform | Monthly cost | What you get |
|---|---|---|
| Hetzner CX32 | €8.50/mo | 8GB, 4 vCPU. DIY everything. |
| Railway | $20-40/mo | Usage-based. Includes database. |
| Render | $25/mo | Per service. Database extra. |
| DigitalOcean | $24-48/mo | Droplet + managed DB. |
| Vultr | $24/mo | 8GB high-performance. |
| Cloudways DO4GB | $54/mo | Managed. SSH, backups, monitoring. |
GPU level (for AI inference)
| Platform | GPU | Monthly cost |
|---|---|---|
| RunPod A100 | A100 80GB | $1,180/mo (24/7) |
| RunPod Serverless | Pay per second | $50-500/mo (variable) |
| Vultr GPU | A100 | $1,480/mo (24/7) |
| Hetzner GPU | Dedicated | From €150/mo |
| AWS p4d | A100 | $2,640/mo (24/7) |
The hidden costs
Railway: usage spikes
Railway charges by the second for CPU and memory. A traffic spike from a Reddit post can 3x your bill for that day. There’s no spending cap unless you set one manually.
Mitigation: Set a usage limit in Railway dashboard. Accept that your app may go down if you hit the limit.
Cloudways: no email
Cloudways doesn’t include email hosting. Add $6-12/month for Google Workspace or Zoho Mail if you need email on your domain.
Hetzner: your time
Hetzner is cheapest in dollars but most expensive in time. You manage: OS updates, SSL certificates, backups, firewall rules, monitoring, and security patches. Budget 2-4 hours/month for ops.
DigitalOcean: database costs
A DO Droplet is $6/mo, but a Managed PostgreSQL database starts at $15/mo. Total for app + database: $21/mo minimum. Railway includes databases in the usage price.
All platforms: LLM API costs
The hosting cost is often the smallest part of an AI app’s bill. LLM API costs dominate:
| Model | Cost per 1K requests | Monthly (1K req/day) |
|---|---|---|
| Claude Sonnet | ~$0.15 | ~$4.50 |
| GPT-5 | ~$0.10 | ~$3.00 |
| DeepSeek | ~$0.01 | ~$0.30 |
| Qwen 3.6 (free) | $0 | $0 |
| Self-hosted | $0 | $0 (hardware cost only) |
See our LLM cost optimization guide for reducing API spend.
Total cost of ownership
Scenario: AI chatbot, 500 users/day
| Setup | Hosting | Database | LLM API | Total | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cheapest (Hetzner + DeepSeek) | €8.50 | Included | $9 | $0 | ~$18/mo |
| Simplest (Railway + Claude) | $20 | Included | $135 | N/A | ~$155/mo |
| Managed (Cloudways + Claude) | $28 | $0 (self-managed) | $135 | $6 | ~$169/mo |
| Free AI (Hetzner + Ollama) | €16.90 | Included | $0 | $0 | ~$17/mo |
The “free AI” setup using Ollama on a Hetzner VPS is by far the cheapest for production AI apps. See our free AI coding server guide for setup.
Decision by budget
| Monthly budget | Best setup |
|---|---|
| $0-10 | Hetzner CX22 + Ollama + free Qwen 3.6 |
| $10-30 | Railway + DeepSeek API |
| $30-60 | Cloudways, ScalaHosting DO2GB + Claude Haiku |
| $60-200 | Cloudways DO4GB + Claude Sonnet |
| $200+ | Dedicated server + RunPod GPU for inference |
Related: Cloudways vs Railway vs Hetzner · Best Managed Cloud Hosting · Best Hosting for AI Side Projects · Best Cloud GPU Providers · How to Reduce LLM API Costs · Free AI Coding Server