Free Trial

New users can take the platform for a spin by starting a free trial. The trial gives access to basic features and includes a one-time grant of $5.

Full vs Limited Trial

Your trial experience depends on whether Railway can verify your account.

Trial Type	Deploy Code	Deploy Databases
Full Trial	✅	✅
Limited Trial	❌	✅

When you sign up for a free Trial, you can connect your GitHub account to initiate verification. Your verification status depends on a number of factors, including the age and activity of your GitHub account.

If your account is not verified — either because you have not initiated the verification process or your account does not meet our criteria for verification — your trial experience will be limited to deploying databases.

Verification is a necessary measure to prevent abuse of the free Trial, limiting users from creating multiple accounts and reducing the risk of trial users deploying or hosting content that violates Railway's Terms of Service.

This is a fully automated process, and Railway does not respond to requests for verification. If your account is not verified, you can upgrade to the Hobby plan to unlock the full Railway experience.

FAQs

How do I get started with the free Trial?

If you do not already have a Railway account, you can sign up for a free Trial by clicking "Login" at railway.app.

How does the Trial work?

When you sign up for the free Trial, you will receive a one-time grant of $5 in credits that you can use to try out Railway. The credits will be applied towards any usage on the platform and do not expire. If you upgrade to a plan while you still have a credit balance from the trial, the remaining balance will carry over to your new plan.

What resources can I access during the Trial?

During the trial, you can access the same features as on the Hobby plan, however you will be limited to 500MB of RAM and shared (rather than dedicated) vCPU cores.

As a trial user, you can always spin-up databases. However, to deploy code, you must be on the Full Trial.

What's the difference between the Limited Trial and the Full Trial?

If you connect your GitHub account, and we are able to verify it against a set of parameters, you will be on the Full Trial where you can deploy both code and databases.

If you do not connect a GitHub account, or we are not able to verify your account, you will be on the Limited Trial, where you can only deploy databases.

While you're on the Limited Trial, you can initiate verification at any time by visiting railway.app/verify in order to access the Full Trial experience.

How far will the $5 one-time Trial grant last?

The longevity of your one-time trial grant depends on how many resources you consume. A project that uses most of the resources available on the Trial plan 24/7 will consume the credits in roughly a month, while a simple webserver may be able to run for several months before running out.