How to Cancel Railway in 2026 (The Usage-Based Hosting Surprise)

Updated February 2026 • 4 min read

Railway charges $5/month base + usage-based pricing for compute ($0.000463/min vCPU) and memory ($0.000231/min per GB). Most hobby projects cost $5-15/month, but apps with databases, background jobs, or traffic spikes can surprise you with $50-100+ bills. Here's how to cancel.

How to Cancel Railway

First: Delete all services — Railway charges for running services even if you "cancel"
Go to each project → click each service → Settings → Delete Service
Delete databases (PostgreSQL, Redis, etc.) — these charge for storage and compute
Go to Account Settings → Billing
Click "Cancel Plan" or "Delete Account"
Verify no charges appear on your next statement

🔴 Delete services FIRST: Simply "canceling" without deleting your running services can result in continued charges. Railway bills for active compute, not just having an account.

Before Canceling: Export Your Data

Database: Run pg_dump or export from the Railway dashboard
Environment variables: Copy all env vars from each service's Settings tab
Code: Already in your GitHub repo (Railway deploys from Git)
Volumes: Download any persistent volume data

Predictable-Price Alternatives

Render (free tier + $7/mo) — Free for static sites, $7/mo for web services with predictable pricing
Fly.io (free tier) — 3 shared VMs free, pay-per-use after but with spending caps
DigitalOcean App Platform ($5/mo) — Fixed pricing, no surprise bills
Hetzner VPS ($3.79/mo) — Cheapest reliable VPS. Best value if you can manage a server
Coolify (free, self-hosted) — Open-source Railway/Vercel alternative. Run on any VPS
Vercel (free) — Best for Next.js/React. Free tier is generous
Cloudflare Pages + Workers (free) — Unlimited bandwidth, generous compute limits

When Railway Is Worth Keeping

Railway genuinely excels at:

Quick prototyping — deploy from GitHub in seconds
Full-stack apps with databases — PostgreSQL/Redis setup is trivial
Monorepos — multiple services in one project
Predictable low-traffic apps — $5-10/mo is fair for a small API + database

If your Railway bill is consistently under $10/month, it's arguably good value. The problem is when bills creep up due to databases, background workers, or traffic spikes with no spending cap.

Bottom line: Railway is developer-friendly but usage-based billing creates unpredictable costs. If your bill is under $10/month, keep it. If it's higher, a $5 Hetzner VPS with Coolify gives you unlimited apps, databases, and zero surprise bills.

Find More Subscriptions to Cancel →

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Quick Cancel Guide: Railway

Direct cancel link + step-by-step instructions

How to Cancel Railway in 2026 (The Usage-Based Hosting Surprise)