Decision guide
Railway is a polished modern PaaS in the Heroku tradition: click a template, link a GitHub repo, attach a managed Postgres or Redis, and you're live. Both Railway and Percher ship MCP servers today, so 'AI assistant can deploy' is true on both sides. The real differences are depth and shape. Railway is an excellent fit for traditional 12-factor app workflows with a small team and a mature web UI. Percher is built around MCP as the primary deploy surface — 42 tools covering the full operational loop and a typed `recovery.nextAction` contract so a failed deploy chains into the next fix automatically. If you prefer a polished web UI with a deep template marketplace, Railway is more refined; if you want the assistant to run the whole operational loop and a flat monthly bill, Percher fits that workflow.
Who Percher is for
Percher is built for personal apps — projects you build for yourself or your close circle. It is notpositioned as production-grade or enterprise hosting today: there is no uptime SLA, no formal compliance attestation, and a single region in Germany. If you're shipping a monetised SaaS, an app for paying customers, or anything that needs an SLA, Railway or a higher-tier provider is the safer choice. Percher may grow into that space; it is not there now.
| Feature | Percher | Railway |
|---|---|---|
| Free tier | Free plan (2 apps, sleep after 10 min idle) | Trial credits on signup, then paid |
| Paid entry price | €3/mo (Starter) — flat, per account | Hobby: $5/mo minimum + metered usage on top — as of 2026-05 |
| Pricing model | Flat monthly subscription per account | Base plan + metered (vCPU, memory, egress, volumes) |
| Region | Single region (Falkenstein, DE) | Multi-region (US East/West, EU West, SE Asia) |
| Compute model | Long-running containers per app | Long-running services on shared infrastructure |
| Built-in database | Opt-in managed PocketBase per app via `[data] mode = "pocketbase"` (SQLite, auth, file storage) | Managed Postgres, MySQL, Redis, MongoDB (one-click) |
| Built-in auth | Yes (when PocketBase is enabled) — auth out of the box with PocketBase | No — bring your own |
| MCP server | MCP-first: 42 tools covering publish, logs, env, rollback, doctor, backups, domains and GitHub connect, plus a typed `recovery.nextAction` for chaining failures into fixes | Has an MCP server for project / service / env management (Railway MCP) |
| Framework support | Node, Bun, Python, static, any Dockerfile | Nixpacks auto-detect, any Dockerfile |
| Template marketplace | 29+ starter templates via `bunx percher create` | Extensive template marketplace with one-click deploy |
| Background workers / cron | Not first-class (use a single long-running app) | Cron jobs first-class; workers as separate services |
| Custom domains | Yes (paid plans) | Yes |
| Automatic SSL | Yes — Let's Encrypt via Caddy | Yes — Let's Encrypt |
| Rollback | Instant per-deploy rollback | Instant per-deploy rollback |
Most Railway services migrate to Percher with a one-line change. If your service is a Dockerfile-driven app, `bunx percher init` detects it and writes `runtime = "docker"` in `percher.toml`; if it's a Nixpacks-built Node/Bun/Python app, Percher uses its own builders for Node and Bun (and falls back to Nixpacks for Python) so the build feels familiar. Copy env vars from Railway's variables UI and re-set with `bunx percher env set`. Domains move with a one-time DNS update.
What doesn't carry over directly: Railway's managed databases (Postgres, MySQL, Redis, MongoDB) are first-class one-click services there but have no equivalent on Percher today. The Percher pattern is the opt-in PocketBase sidecar (`[data] mode = "pocketbase"`) for SQLite + auth + file storage, plus external providers for anything else — point `DATABASE_URL` / `REDIS_URL` at Neon, Supabase, Upstash, your own server, etc. Railway cron jobs need to be replaced with an external scheduler (GitHub Actions on cron, EasyCron) hitting a webhook endpoint until Percher adds first-class cron.
# In your project root:
bunx percher init # detects framework, generates percher.toml
bunx percher env set DATABASE_URL=... # for each Railway variable
bunx percher publish # build + deploy
bunx percher domains add yourdomain.comYes. For Node and Bun apps, Percher uses its own multi-stage Dockerfile generator (faster cold builds, ~225 MB images). For Python and other runtimes Percher falls back to Nixpacks too, using the same upstream binary Railway does — so the build environment is familiar. Custom `nixpacks.toml` files apply: Percher's nixpacks fallback reads them the same way.
For a few small apps, almost always — Percher's flat plans (€0 / €3 / €12 / €29 per month) cover the whole account, while Railway charges a base plan plus metered usage on top. For a single app with very high traffic and managed databases, Railway's per-resource model can be more cost-effective. Run the math against your current Railway bill; the metered breakdown is in Railway's billing dashboard.
Percher doesn't ship a managed Postgres / MySQL / Redis today. Every app can opt into the managed PocketBase sidecar (SQLite, authentication, S3-compatible file storage) by setting `[data] mode = "pocketbase"` in `percher.toml` — Percher provisions it on first deploy and injects `POCKETBASE_URL` automatically. For raw Postgres, MySQL, or Redis, point `DATABASE_URL` / `REDIS_URL` at any external provider (Neon, PlanetScale, Supabase, Upstash); Percher's outbound HTTPS proxy handles the connections transparently.
Percher has its own template gallery (`bunx percher create app --template <name>`) covering 29+ starter templates — Next.js, SvelteKit, Astro, Vite (React/Vue), FastAPI, Flask, Django, Eleventy, Hugo, and more. It's smaller than Railway's marketplace, but the templates are all production-ready and version-pinned. The `percher init` command also adapts to whatever you already have in the project root, so you rarely need a template after the first project.
Railway supports cron jobs as a first-class service type; Percher doesn't, yet. The current pattern is either an external scheduler (GitHub Actions on a schedule, EasyCron, etc.) calling a `/api/cron/<name>` webhook in your app, or an in-process scheduler (a setInterval at startup) for jobs that fit the same process. First-class cron is on the roadmap but not yet shipped.
Free plan, no credit card. Bring any Node, Bun, Python, or Docker app.
Bringing an existing app? See recommended setup or the migration walkthrough above.