Cloud Hosting Pricing Compared — Railway vs Cloudways vs Hetzner vs Vultr vs RunPod (2026)
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. |
| 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 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