Encore vs Railway

Encore automates backend infrastructure from local development to production for developers and AI coding agents. Its open-source SDK lets teams describe services, databases, Pub/Sub, and caches in application code. One command can run a complete backend locally, including databases and Pub/Sub; the same declarations can provision infrastructure in a user's AWS or GCP account and deploy to either cloud. The platform includes GitHub-integrated CI/CD, distributed tracing, metrics, architecture diagrams, and API documentation generated from code. Supported plans can create a temporary cloud environment for each pull request. Encore's full feature set supports TypeScript and Go; Python and Rust support is described as coming soon. Starter is free, with two development environments, 1M trace events monthly, seven-day log and trace retention, and one concurrent build. Pro is $49 per member per month, plus $99 per AWS/GCP environment and $2.50 per resource in each environment; cloud-provider charges are separate. Platforms listed include API, Linux, macOS, self-hosted, web, and Windows.

Railway is a deployment platform for teams that want to provision infrastructure, develop locally against it, and deploy services to the cloud. Projects can start from Docker images, GitHub repositories, local repositories, container registries, or templates. Railway offers PostgreSQL, MySQL, MongoDB, and Redis database templates with built-in backups, plus persistent volumes with up to 5 TB of storage. Networking includes public and private options, TCP proxying, custom domains, and managed TLS certificates. Services can scale vertically, horizontally, and across four regions. Operational tools include logs retained for up to 90 days, configurable dashboards, distributed tracing, health checks, usage limits, and alerts. Teams can use unlimited environments, pull-request and preview deployments, GitHub branch deploys, approval gates, audit logs, and rollbacks. Railway also provides a GraphQL API, a CLI, and iOS and Android apps for deploying, monitoring, and managing services. The Trial plan includes a one-time $5 free credit; Hobby costs $5 a month and Pro costs $20 a month. Enterprise pricing is custom.