Ample vs Railway: which is better for deploying apps from coding agents? | Ample

The short version

Railway is the better choice for services that need several regions, replicas or Docker images. Ample is the better choice when a coding agent should deploy alone: it signs up without a person, gets a free plan with a hard cap, and each app runs in its own microVM with databases created automatically.

WHO THIS IS FOR

Before you choose

Both platforms run real long-running processes from a repository, offer managed databases and work with coding agents. They differ in isolation, in how billing stops, and in how much an agent can do without a person.

Ample and Railway side by side

Ample Railway
Free plan $0 with no card. 2 apps running at once, 2 vCPU, 2 GB memory, 3 GB volumes, 1 GB bucket storage, 2 buckets. A 30-day trial with $5 of credit and no card; afterwards a Free plan with $1 of usage a month, 0.5 GB of memory per service and no custom domain.
Paid plans Custom plans priced on volume (number of apps, limits, spending caps). No public list price; see pricing. Hobby $5 a month and Pro $20 a month per workspace, each including that much usage. Compute is billed per second: about $20 per vCPU and $10 per GB of memory a month.
Spending limit Free has a hard budget ($5 a month, $2 a day). At the cap, apps stop serving until the account is back under budget; nothing is deleted and nothing is billed. An optional hard usage limit (minimum $10) takes every workload offline when reached; services come back when the limit is raised.
How apps run Each app runs as a normal long-running process in its own microVM with its own kernel. Containers built from a repository or a Docker image, on Railway's own hardware. Isolation for regular services is not documented.
Long-running servers and workers Yes. Web services and background workers (--kind worker) run as ordinary processes. Yes. Services run continuously; WebSockets are supported.
Languages Node, Python, Go, Ruby, PHP, Java, .NET, Elixir, Rust and static sites, detected from the repository. Node, Python, Go, PHP, Java, Ruby, Deno, Rust, Elixir and static sites through Railpack, or any Dockerfile.
Docker images No. Ample builds from source; Dockerfile build steps are not run. Yes. A Dockerfile is used automatically, and registry images can be deployed.
Databases Managed Postgres, MySQL, Redis and MongoDB, each in its own microVM, created automatically when the code needs one. One-click Postgres, MySQL, Redis and MongoDB templates, with HA variants; backups are turned on by the user.
Object storage S3-compatible buckets, optionally published through Ample's CDN. Private S3-compatible buckets; no public buckets.
Persistent disk Persistent volumes attached to the app. Volumes, one per service; services with a volume cannot use replicas.
Custom domains and TLS Custom domains with automatic TLS. Custom domains with automatic certificates; 2 on Hobby, 20 on Pro.
Regions No region choice. 4 regions: US West, US East, EU West, Southeast Asia.
Scheduled jobs Scheduled jobs: a command or HTTP request on a cron schedule (any time zone) or interval, with retries and run history (ample job create). Built-in cron services.
Agent access CLI, remote MCP server (OAuth), A2A endpoint and agent skills. Deploys are synchronous and return JSON with an exit code: 0 live, 1 failed, 2 needs input. Hosted MCP at mcp.railway.com plus a fuller local MCP, plugins for ChatGPT, Claude, Claude Code, Codex and Cursor, and an agent skill.
Agent signup without a person Yes. ample auth signup creates an account with no browser, card or CAPTCHA; a person claims it by email within 48 hours. Partly. ssh railway.new gives a temporary VM with no account (60 minutes to build, 24 hours to claim); railway up still needs a person to approve signup.

FIT CHECK

Which one fits

Choose Ample when

Choose Railway when

Move a Railway service to Ample

  1. Write down build and start commands

    Railpack detects these implicitly. Copy them from the service settings, or from railway.json / railway.toml, which Railway stops reading on December 1, 2026.

  2. Resolve reference variables

    Replace ${{Postgres.DATABASE_URL}} and ${{shared.X}} with real values in a local env file, and drop RAILWAY_* variables, which do not exist elsewhere.

  3. Plan and deploy

    Ample detects the runtime and any database the code needs. Pass your env file; if you omit DATABASE_URL, Ample creates a managed database and injects it.

   ample plan --write && ample up

  1. Move data and schedules

    Dump Railway databases with pg_dump, mysqldump or mongodump and restore into the Ample database. Copy bucket objects with any S3 tool. Cron services become Ample jobs (ample job create).

  2. Point your domain

    Add the domain to the app, update DNS to the target Ample prints, and keep the old app running until the new one answers on the domain.

   ample domain add <app-name> www.example.com

Frequently asked questions

Does Ample have something like ssh railway.new?

The closest is ample auth signup, which gives an agent a real account (free-plan limits, 48 hours to claim) with no browser, card or CAPTCHA, and then deploys the repository it is working in. Ample does not hand out a shell box with coding agents preinstalled.

What happens when a deploy fails?

Ample returns the failure as JSON: who must act (the app, the account or Ample), a diagnosis, evidence from inside the app's VM and a suggested fix, so the agent can fix the code and redeploy without a person reading logs.

Can I run a Docker image on Ample?

No. Ample builds from source for its supported runtimes and does not run Dockerfile instructions. If your service only exists as an image, Railway is the better fit today.

Can Ample import my Railway project?

There is no one-click import. ample plan --write reads the repository and proposes the services and databases; the steps above cover variables and data.

Where these facts come from