Happy Valley

PostHog vs Railway

PostHog and Railway are both developer tools tools. PostHog is aimed at developers and small businesses, while Railway is aimed at developers. Both have a free plan.

PostHog

Open-source product analytics, replays and flags

Railway

Deploy anything from a Git repo

PricingFreemiumFreemium · $5
Starting priceNot published$5/mo
Free planYesYes
Free trial—30 days
Built forDevelopers, Small businessesDevelopers
Platformswebweb
CountryUS · 2020US · 2020
Rating——

Choose PostHog if

Engineering-led startups and scale-ups that want analytics, replay, flags and experiments without three vendors.

  • Several products in one with shared data
  • Generous free allowances; usage-based beyond
  • Open source and engineer-friendly

Look elsewhere if: Marketing-only web analytics (Plausible) or large enterprises standardized on Amplitude.

Choose Railway if

Developers and small teams who want Heroku-like simplicity with modern pricing.

  • Fastest path from repo to running backend
  • Transparent usage pricing with limits
  • Great DX and templates

Look elsewhere if: Workloads needing many managed cloud services or extreme cost optimization.

PostHog vs Railway pricing

PostHog

  • Free$01M events, 5K recordings, 1M flag requests, 1,500 survey responses/mo
  • Pay-as-you-gofrom $0.00005/per eventPer product after free tier, as low as $0.000009/event; billing limits
  • Boost$250/moPlatform package: unlimited projects, SSO enforcement, HIPAA BAA
  • Scale$750/moPriority support, SAML; includes Boost
  • EnterpriseCustomRBAC, dedicated support, training

Railway

  • Free$030-day trial with $5 credit, then $1/mo; 0.5 GB RAM
  • Hobby$5/moMinimum usage, $5 credit included; single developer
  • Pro$20/moMinimum usage, $20 credit; unlimited workspace seats
  • EnterpriseCustomSSO, RBAC, HIPAA BAAs, dedicated VMs

PostHog · Key features

  • Product analytics: funnels, retention, paths, trends, lifecycle
  • Session replay with console and network logs
  • Feature flags and multivariate experiments
  • Surveys and in-app feedback
  • Data warehouse, HogQL SQL and CDP destinations
  • Error tracking and LLM observability

Cons

  • UI can feel dense; analytics UX trails Amplitude
  • Costs need monitoring across many products
  • Self-hosting only recommended for small scale

Railway · Key features

  • Deploy from GitHub or Docker with automatic builds
  • Managed Postgres, MySQL, Redis, MongoDB templates
  • Environments, PR environments and private networking
  • Visual project canvas and config as code
  • Per-second usage billing with spend limits
  • Cron jobs, volumes, custom domains and metrics

Cons

  • Can be more expensive than a VPS for steady loads
  • Fewer managed services than big clouds
  • Regions limited compared with AWS

PostHog vs Railway: FAQ

Do PostHog and Railway have a free plan?

Yes, both PostHog and Railway have a free plan; paid plans add more usage and features.

Which is better for small businesses, PostHog or Railway?

PostHog lists small businesses as a core audience, while Railway is aimed more at developers.

Not sure yet?