Deploy from source. Choose who runs the servers.
Railway gets you from a GitHub repo to a running app without maintaining servers. It bills for what your app uses, so costs can change as traffic grows. For a team weighing self-hosting, the question is whether more control over the infrastructure is worth the work of running it.
Miren builds your code without a Dockerfile and adjusts app instance counts with traffic, on infrastructure you control. The runtime is free to self-host. You still pay for servers, storage, and networking, and you're responsible for operating them.
Where Miren is today: Managed clusters are in early access. Distributed runners spread stateless workloads across nodes, but stateful workloads and the control plane still run on the coordinator; adding runners doesn't make the coordinator highly available. Miren Disks support local backup and restore, with remote cloud backup still on the roadmap.
| Feature | Railway | Miren |
|---|---|---|
| Where it runs | Railway's managed cloud — you don't run the servers | Your own infrastructure — a VPS, a cloud box, or bare metal |
| Pricing | Usage-based; costs change with consumption | Free self-hosted runtime; you pay for and operate your infrastructure |
| Deploys | Connect a GitHub repo; Railway builds it for you | Push your code — no Dockerfile required |
| PR previews | Preview environments for every pull request | Preview environments too, declared in your config |
| Autoscaling | Automatic vertical scaling; you add replicas by hand | On by default — Miren adjusts instance counts with traffic |
| Lock-in | Managed platform; leaving means moving your databases and pipeline | Open-source runtime on your infrastructure; moving still takes migration work |
| Team access | Per-seat pricing on paid plans | Auth and access control included, through Miren Cloud |
| Free tier | One-time $5 trial credit; no permanent free tier | Free to self-host — run it on hardware you've already got |
Connect a GitHub repo and Railway builds and deploys your app. You don't run the servers. PR previews let you test changes before merging, and rollbacks give you a way back when a release goes wrong. One-click databases and templates help get a new app off the ground.
Your apps, databases, and networking live on Railway's infrastructure. A busier month can mean a larger usage bill. Moving elsewhere means migrating data, reconfiguring networking, and rebuilding the deployment pipeline around another platform.
Miren builds your code without a Dockerfile, then runs it on your servers. It adjusts app instance counts with traffic; Railway scales vertically and leaves replica counts to you. The self-hosted runtime is free, but the servers and the work of running them aren't. Miren Cloud handles team authentication and access control.
Deploy to your servers and see how the workflow feels.