DEV Community

Alex Spinov
Alex Spinov

Posted on

Railway Has a Free Deployment Platform — Deploy Any App from GitHub with Zero Configuration

Why Railway?

Railway deploys from GitHub with zero config. Push code, Railway detects the framework, builds, and deploys. Databases included.

Deploy in 3 Steps

  1. Connect GitHub repo
  2. Railway auto-detects Node.js/Python/Go/Rust/etc.
  3. Deploy on every push

Add a Database

# From Railway dashboard: + New > Database > PostgreSQL
# Environment variable auto-injected: DATABASE_URL
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode
import { Pool } from 'pg'
const pool = new Pool({ connectionString: process.env.DATABASE_URL })
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Services You Can Add

  • PostgreSQL, MySQL, MongoDB, Redis
  • Cron jobs
  • Worker processes
  • Static sites

railway.toml

[build]
builder = "nixpacks"
buildCommand = "npm run build"

[deploy]
startCommand = "npm start"
healthcheckPath = "/health"
restartPolicyType = "on_failure"
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Railway vs Vercel vs Render

Feature Railway Vercel Render
Databases Built-in No Yes
Docker Yes No Yes
Free tier $5/mo credit Generous 750 hrs
Languages Any JS/Python Any
Deploy GitHub push GitHub push GitHub push

Need to extract data from any website at scale? I build custom web scrapers — 77 production scrapers running on Apify Store. Email me at spinov001@gmail.com for a tailored solution.

Top comments (0)