Overview
Fly.io runs your app as Fly Machines: Firecracker VMs built from a Docker image that boot in under a second. You deploy with the flyctl CLI (fly launch, fly deploy) and can place machines in any of 18 regions, with Anycast routing sending each user to the nearest one. Machines can be set to stop when idle and start on the next request, which keeps small apps cheap.
There are no plans. Everything is billed per second of running time: a shared-cpu-1x machine with 256 MB costs $1.94 a month in Ashburn, extra RAM is $5 per GB, and regional multipliers raise prices elsewhere. Volumes, snapshots, dedicated IPv4 addresses and egress are charged separately. New organizations have no free allowance and need a credit card; the old Hobby, Launch and Scale plans with free VMs were discontinued in October 2024.
Managed Postgres starts at $38 a month for a 1 GB high-availability cluster with backups and pooling, which is often more than the app itself costs. Paid support ($29, $199 or from $2,500) and a $99 HIPAA package are add-ons. The company now also markets Sprites, persistent sleepable VMs for AI agents.
Expect to work closer to the infrastructure than on Render or Railway: you think about machines, volumes and regions in fly.toml.
Pricing and plans
| Plan | Price | What you get |
|---|---|---|
| shared-cpu-1x 256 MB | $1.94/mo | Ashburn price; other regions up to 1.6x |
| shared-cpu-4x 1 GB | $7.78/mo | Extra RAM $5 per GB-month |
| performance-1x 2 GB | $31/mo | Dedicated CPU |
| Managed Postgres Basic | $38/mo | shared-2x, 1 GB, HA and backups; storage $0.28/GB |
| Support Standard | $29/mo | 36-hour first response |
| HIPAA package | $99/mo | BAA pre-signed |
What it does
- Fly Machines
- Hardware-isolated VMs with sub-second boot, controllable through a REST API as well as flyctl.
- Multi-region with Anycast
- Run copies of an app in several regions; a shared IPv4 and Anycast IPv6 route users to the closest.
- Auto-stop and auto-start
- Idle machines can stop and restart on incoming requests; stopped machines pay only $0.15 per GB of root filesystem.
- Managed Postgres
- HA clusters with automated backups, connection pooling, pgvector and PostGIS, up to 1 TB storage.
- Volumes
- Local NVMe-backed persistent storage at $0.15/GB-month, with daily snapshots kept 5 days by default.
- Sprites
- Persistent Linux VMs for coding agents that sleep when idle and bill CPU and memory only while active.
Strengths and limitations
Strengths
- Cheapest entry compute among managed platforms, from $1.94/month.
- 18 regions across six continents with simple multi-region deploys.
- Low egress prices in North America and Europe ($0.02/GB).
- Machines API allows per-user or per-request VMs.
Limitations
- No free tier for new accounts, and a credit card is required.
- Managed Postgres starts at $38/month.
- Managed Postgres does not yet handle security patches and version upgrades, per Fly's docs.
- More hands-on than Render or Railway: regions, volumes and machine sizes are yours to manage.
- Compute prices vary by region, up to 1.6x the Ashburn price.
Who it suits
Good for
- Latency-sensitive apps served from several regions
- Docker-based apps on a small budget
- Products that start a VM per user or per job
Look elsewhere if
- Beginners who want a free, zero-config host
- Apps that need a cheap managed database
Pricing history
-
Fly.io starts charging for volume snapshots
From 1 Jan 2026 (first billed on the February 2026 invoice), volume snapshot storage costs $0.08/GB-month with the first 10 GB free each month; before that snapshots were not charged. Source ↗
-
Fly.io lets legacy Hobby plans convert to pay-as-you-go immediately
Announced 10 Nov 2025: legacy Hobby orgs can switch to pay-as-you-go at once instead of at the next billing period; converting ends the legacy free allowances (3 small VMs, 3 GB volumes). New orgs have had no free allowance since plans were discontinued on 7 Oct 2024. Source ↗
Alternatives to Fly.io
| Tool | From | Free option | Stages |
|---|---|---|---|
| Northflank Kubernetes-based PaaS | $2.70/mo | Free tier | |
| Railway Usage-billed PaaS | $5/mo | Free tier | |
| Cloudflare Workers (incl. Pages) Edge serverless platform | $5/mo | Free tier | |
| DigitalOcean App Platform Managed PaaS | $5/mo | Free tier | |
| Sevalla Managed PaaS | $5/mo | Free tier | |
| alwaysdata European managed hosting | €5/mo | Free tier |
Questions
Does Fly.io still have a free tier?
No. New organizations are pay-as-you-go with no free allowance; only organizations on legacy plans bought before 7 October 2024 keep free VMs.
What is the cheapest Fly.io machine?
shared-cpu-1x with 256 MB of RAM at $1.94/month in Ashburn or Secaucus; other regions cost up to 1.6 times more.
How much is Fly.io Managed Postgres?
From $38/month for the Basic plan (shared-2x, 1 GB) plus $0.28 per GB of storage.
Can Fly.io apps scale to zero?
Yes. Machines can auto-stop when idle and auto-start on the next request; a stopped machine is billed only for its root filesystem.
Sources read for this page