BUT CAN'T RAILWAY DO THAT?
Alfredo vs Railway
“Can't Railway spin up my apps and databases already?”
Railway rents the deploy half per project; Alfredo self-hosts deploys and adds the cross-project operations layer.
YOU KEEP
Any project you leave on Railway.
Alfredo and Railway, across the seven things
The honest version, side by side. Green is automatic, amber is manual work you own, a grey ring is not possible.
| CAPABILITY | Alfredo | Railway |
|---|---|---|
| Runs on your servers | Any VPS you can SSH into. Alfredo runs on your servers; it does not host your projects. | No. |
| Deploys your projects | Built in. Pick the integrations a project needs and deploy — there is no separate PaaS underneath. | Yes, with one-click database templates. |
| Wires each project at birth | The core claim. Auth, email, database, analytics and payments are configured at creation, secrets are moved for you, and integrations already running are reused. | Database templates only — no integration wiring. |
| One dashboard across projects | One HQ across every project you deploy. | No — the observability dashboard is scoped per project-environment, infra only (docs, July 2026). |
| Sees your business, not just CPU | Payments and email delivery sit next to traffic, errors and uptime — business signals, not just CPU. | No. |
| Works without assembly | Zero setup — the cross-project view is assembled for you, not built. | On the deploy side, yes. |
| Flat cost for many projects | Flat: you pay for your own box, not per host, per project or per module. | Hobby $5/mo with included usage, Pro $20/mo per seat, then usage (2026-07-18). |
automatic manual not possibleVERIFIED JULY 2026
ALFREDO ADDS
Your own hardware, flat costs, wiring beyond databases, and one view across projects. Alfredo is a prototype; Railway is a managed platform with a team behind it.
RAILWAY'S REAL WINS
Good DX, low entry price, managed reliability, quick database templates.
STAY ON RAILWAY IF
Stay put if you are happy paying for managed infrastructure and run few projects. Alfredo is an early, unproven prototype; Railway is the mature, proven thing.