Compare
SelfHost vs
RailwayManaged database platform vs app deployment platform. What you get for your PostgreSQL workloads.
TL;DR
The short
version.
SelfHost is a fully managed database platform — Railway runs PostgreSQL in Docker containers with no management layer.
SelfHost includes automated backups, PITR, connection pooling, monitoring, and alerts — Railway has none of these built-in.
SelfHost offers dedicated compute with guaranteed resources — Railway uses shared infrastructure with usage-based billing.
Pricing comparison
Side by side
pricing.
Small DB (2 GB RAM, 20 GB storage, always-on)
- $5 plan + $20.44 (RAM) + $5 (storage)
- No backups, no monitoring, no pooling
- t4g.small $16.56 + $2.16 (20 GB) + Starter $19
- Fully managed with backups, alerts, pooling
Production (4 GB RAM, 100 GB, needs backups + monitoring)
- $5 + $40.88 (RAM) + $25 (storage)
- + backup solution ($10-30 DIY)
- + monitoring ($0-70 DIY)
- Plus your engineering time
- t4g.medium $33.11 + $10.80 + Pro $79
- Everything included, no DIY
HA Setup
- No built-in HA
- Must manually configure replica, load balancer, failover
- Significant engineering time required
- Managed replicas, multi-AZ
- Automatic failover
- All included in Pro tier
Feature by feature
Full
comparison.
| Feature | SelfHost | Railway |
|---|---|---|
| Database management | Fully managed | Unmanaged (Docker container) |
| Automated backups | Daily (Starter+), custom (Pro) | None built-in |
| PITR | Yes (Pro) | None |
| Connection pooling | Coming soon | None |
| Monitoring | Built-in dashboard (up to 90 days) | Basic service metrics |
| Alerts | Email + Slack, DB-specific | Generic service alerts |
| HA / Replicas | Managed replicas (Pro) | Manual setup required |
| Autoscaling | Yes (Pro) | Usage-based (auto) |
| AI management | 75 MCP tools | None |
| BYOC | Yes ($79/mo) | No |
| Pricing model | Fixed monthly | Usage-based (per vCPU-hr + GB-hr) |
| Dedicated compute | Yes (Graviton instances) | Shared infrastructure |
| PG config access | Full tuning | Dockerfile customization |
| PG version control | 16-18, managed upgrades | Manual via Docker image |
| Regions | 38 AWS regions | 1 US region (default), limited |
Deep dive
Where the
differences matter.
Docker container is not a database platform
Railway is an excellent deployment platform for apps, but its PostgreSQL offering is essentially a Docker container with a persistent volume. There's no backup automation, no connection pooling, no query monitoring, no alert system, and no failover. You're responsible for everything a DBA would normally handle. SelfHost is purpose-built for database management — it handles all of that for you.
Cheap base price, expensive in practice
Railway's base price looks cheap, but production databases need backups, monitoring, and alerting. Setting those up manually takes engineering time and third-party services: pg_dump scripts + S3 ($5-15/mo), Grafana/Datadog ($0-70/mo), PagerDuty ($21/user/mo). SelfHost bundles all of this starting at $19/mo.
Full-stack monorepo deployments
Railway excels at deploying full-stack apps (frontend + backend + database) from a monorepo. If your database is a small part of a larger Railway deployment and you don't need enterprise DB features, Railway keeps everything in one platform. For database-heavy workloads that need production-grade management, SelfHost is the right tool.