Railway alternative for PHP hosting
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fortrabbit vs Railway.
fortrabbit is a Railway alternative — PHP-focused hosting with predictable pricing, no usage-meter surprises, and EU data residency.
Why pick fortrabbit over Railway for PHP hosting?
fortrabbit is a managed PaaS built exclusively for PHP. Railway is a polyglot deployment platform — a modern take on Heroku that runs PHP, Python, Ruby, Node, and more via buildpacks and containers. The UI is slick, but pricing is usage-based and can surprise at scale, and PHP is just one supported runtime among many.
If you're hosting PHP — Laravel, Symfony, Statamic, Craft CMS, Kirby, or plain PHP — fortrabbit gives you a focused environment: tuned PHP runtime, integrated MySQL, atomic deploys, persistent storage, and EU data residency. Pricing is per-app and predictable; no per-second metering. Plans start at €2.50 per month; the trial doesn't require a credit card.
Start a free trial — no credit card# FAQ
Does fortrabbit have usage-based pricing like Railway?
No. fortrabbit pricing is a flat monthly plan per app — the PHP runtime, MySQL component, SSL, and storage are included. There is no per-second machine billing or egress meter to model. The invoice in month two looks like the invoice in month one, unless you change plan.
#Why pick fortrabbit over Railway for a PHP-only stack?
Railway is a polyglot deployment platform — PHP runs as one of several supported runtimes through buildpacks and containers. fortrabbit has only ever hosted PHP, so the defaults are PHP-shaped: opcache, version pinning, Composer cache, atomic releases, integrated MySQL. If your stack is PHP only, the PHP-only platform tends to fit better.
#How do I move my PHP app from Railway to fortrabbit?
Push your repo to the new fortrabbit app for git-push deploys, transfer environment variables, and import your database from a dump via the SSH tunnel into the MySQL component. Files on a Railway volume map to fortrabbit's persistent storage — rsync them across. No Dockerfile or buildpack config to translate.
#Is fortrabbit a better fit than Railway for EU projects?
For projects that need EU jurisdiction, yes. fortrabbit runs in AWS EU (Ireland) and the company is registered in Berlin, so both the operational entity and the infrastructure sit inside EU jurisdiction. Railway is US-based and runs in cloud regions globally; EU residency is available but the company and support sit in the US.
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