Head to head
Stop guessing which one. Put them side by side.
Up to 4 tools, same rows for each: what it is, what it really costs, the trap, and how to wire it up. The URL carries your picks — send it to anyone.
RailwayGitHub PagesAWS Amplify Hosting
Quick read
- Free with no card: GitHub Pages.
| Field | Railwayrailway.com | GitHub Pagespages.github.com | AWS Amplify Hostingaws.amazon.com |
|---|---|---|---|
| What it is | Usage-based container PaaS that deploys any Dockerfile or auto-detected framework alongside one-click Postgres, Redis and Mongo. Subscription fees include an equal usage credit; past that you pay $20 per vCPU-month, $10 per GB RAM-month and $0.05 per GB egress. | Serves a static site directly from a repository branch or a GitHub Actions build, with free HTTPS on custom domains. Limits are soft rather than metered: a 1 GB published site, 100 GB of bandwidth a month and 10 builds an hour. No server-side code at all. | AWS's managed CI/CD plus CloudFront hosting for React, Vite and Next.js, with SSR on Lambda and first-party wiring into Cognito, AppSync, DynamoDB and S3. Pricing is pure pay-per-unit — $0.15 per GB served, $0.01 per build minute, $0.30 per million SSR requests. |
| Category | Hosting, deploy & edge | Hosting, deploy & edge | Hosting, deploy & edge |
| Cost tier | mixed | free | mixed |
| Pricing | Trial: $5 credit for 30 days. Hobby $5/mo including $5 usage. Pro $20/seat/mo including $20. Compute $20 per vCPU-month and $10 per GB RAM-month, egress $0.05/GB, billed per second. | Free on public repos with GitHub Free; private repos require Pro ($4/mo), Team or Enterprise. Soft limits: 1 GB published site, 100 GB bandwidth per month, 10 builds per hour (waived when using a custom Actions workflow). | Free tier: 1,000 build minutes, 5 GB stored, 15 GB served, 500k SSR requests, 100 GB-hours SSR compute per month. Then $0.01 per standard build minute, $0.023/GB stored, $0.15/GB served, $0.30 per 1M SSR requests, $0.20 per SSR GB-hour. |
| Why builders pick it | Fastest path from a repo plus a database to a live URL — templates, private networking and env var references just work. Ideal when your Vite frontend needs a real always-on API and Postgres beside it. | The zero-thought way to publish a Vite build, docs site or portfolio — one Actions workflow and it is live forever with no billing relationship to worry about and no credit card on file. | If the rest of your stack already lives in AWS, Amplify keeps auth, data and hosting inside one IAM boundary with per-branch environments. The free tier covers a low-traffic first year comfortably. |
| Watch out for | Egress at $0.05/GB is 2.5x Fly and 5x Bunny, so never serve media from it. Railway does offer a true hard usage limit: set one in workspace settings and all workloads go offline at 100% — note they do not auto-restart, you must restart manually. | GitHub's terms forbid running a business, e-commerce or SaaS on Pages. Billing risk is genuinely zero, but so are redirects, SSR, server env vars and access control. Exceeding 100 GB earns a polite email, not an invoice. | AWS has no hard spend cap — Budgets only send alerts. Amplify tutorial defaults have produced four-figure bills, including a documented $1,100 charge from an undisclosed OpenSearch instance (refunded). Create an AWS Budget with an SNS or Lambda action that disables the offending resources. |
| How to wire it up | npm i -g @railway/cli && railway up | npx gh-pages -d dist | npm create amplify@latest && npx ampx sandbox |
| Editor's pick | No | No | No |
Which one did you ship?
The grid says what these tools are. This says what builders did about it — one decision per person, changeable whenever you change your mind.
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# Tool comparison — Railway vs GitHub Pages vs AWS Amplify Hosting Source: Kbaise, a directory of tools that work with Lovable projects. Pick one and tell me why before writing any integration code. ## Railway (railway) - URL: https://railway.com - Category: Hosting, deploy & edge - Cost: mixed — Trial: $5 credit for 30 days. Hobby $5/mo including $5 usage. Pro $20/seat/mo including $20. Compute $20 per vCPU-month and $10 per GB RAM-month, egress $0.05/GB, billed per second. - What it is: Usage-based container PaaS that deploys any Dockerfile or auto-detected framework alongside one-click Postgres, Redis and Mongo. Subscription fees include an equal usage credit; past that you pay $20 per vCPU-month, $10 per GB RAM-month and $0.05 per GB egress. - Why builders pick it: Fastest path from a repo plus a database to a live URL — templates, private networking and env var references just work. Ideal when your Vite frontend needs a real always-on API and Postgres beside it. - Trap: Egress at $0.05/GB is 2.5x Fly and 5x Bunny, so never serve media from it. Railway does offer a true hard usage limit: set one in workspace settings and all workloads go offline at 100% — note they do not auto-restart, you must restart manually. - Wiring: npm i -g @railway/cli && railway up - Full dossier: /api/public/tools/railway ## GitHub Pages (github-pages) - URL: https://pages.github.com - Category: Hosting, deploy & edge - Cost: free — Free on public repos with GitHub Free; private repos require Pro ($4/mo), Team or Enterprise. Soft limits: 1 GB published site, 100 GB bandwidth per month, 10 builds per hour (waived when using a custom Actions workflow). - What it is: Serves a static site directly from a repository branch or a GitHub Actions build, with free HTTPS on custom domains. Limits are soft rather than metered: a 1 GB published site, 100 GB of bandwidth a month and 10 builds an hour. No server-side code at all. - Why builders pick it: The zero-thought way to publish a Vite build, docs site or portfolio — one Actions workflow and it is live forever with no billing relationship to worry about and no credit card on file. - Trap: GitHub's terms forbid running a business, e-commerce or SaaS on Pages. Billing risk is genuinely zero, but so are redirects, SSR, server env vars and access control. Exceeding 100 GB earns a polite email, not an invoice. - Wiring: npx gh-pages -d dist - Full dossier: /api/public/tools/github-pages ## AWS Amplify Hosting (aws-amplify-hosting) - URL: https://aws.amazon.com/amplify/ - Category: Hosting, deploy & edge - Cost: mixed — Free tier: 1,000 build minutes, 5 GB stored, 15 GB served, 500k SSR requests, 100 GB-hours SSR compute per month. Then $0.01 per standard build minute, $0.023/GB stored, $0.15/GB served, $0.30 per 1M SSR requests, $0.20 per SSR GB-hour. - What it is: AWS's managed CI/CD plus CloudFront hosting for React, Vite and Next.js, with SSR on Lambda and first-party wiring into Cognito, AppSync, DynamoDB and S3. Pricing is pure pay-per-unit — $0.15 per GB served, $0.01 per build minute, $0.30 per million SSR requests. - Why builders pick it: If the rest of your stack already lives in AWS, Amplify keeps auth, data and hosting inside one IAM boundary with per-branch environments. The free tier covers a low-traffic first year comfortably. - Trap: AWS has no hard spend cap — Budgets only send alerts. Amplify tutorial defaults have produced four-figure bills, including a documented $1,100 charge from an undisclosed OpenSearch instance (refunded). Create an AWS Budget with an SNS or Lambda action that disables the offending resources. - Wiring: npm create amplify@latest && npx ampx sandbox - Full dossier: /api/public/tools/aws-amplify-hosting ## Quick read - Free with no card: GitHub Pages. ## Rules 1. Prefer the free tier when no budget was stated, and say what the ceiling is. 2. Read the full dossier before integrating. 3. Fetch /api/public/models before writing any AI model ID.
Agents can fetch the same thing: GET /api/public/compare?slugs=railway,github-pages,aws-amplify-hosting