Railway vs Replit
Railway is an app platform that also sells sandboxes: Linux VMs your code creates, runs commands in and destroys. Replit is an AI app builder where Replit Agent writes an app from a chat and Replit hosts it, with no API to start many machines.
The companies and products
Railway
Railway is a cloud platform for deploying web apps, servers and databases, which now also sells sandboxes and cloud agents.
Railway's main product is app hosting: you deploy services and databases as containers on its own hardware. In 2026 it added Sandboxes, isolated Linux VMs you create from the CLI or a TypeScript SDK, run commands in and destroy, and Cloud Agents, a personal VM for running a coding agent, in early access. It suits teams already hosting on Railway who want throwaway machines next to their apps.
Replit
Replit is an AI app builder and hosting platform: you describe an app in chat, Replit Agent writes it, and Replit publishes it.
You work in a browser workspace where Replit Agent sets up the project, writes the code, tests it and fixes problems, with system packages managed by Nix. When the app is ready you publish it as an Autoscale, Static, Scheduled or Reserved VM deployment, with Postgres and object storage next to it. It is built for people and teams who want a working app, not for programs that need to create many machines by API, so this page compares the parts where the two overlap.
Which use cases each one fits
For each use case, Battleships prices every sandbox provider on the same workload and sorts them from the cheapest monthly bill up. “16th cheapest of 366” means 15 of the other 365 providers run that workload, with every feature it needs, for less. “With limits” means the provider runs it but misses something, so it is listed after every full match. Open a use case for its whole ranking and what each provider misses.
| Use case and its workload | Railway: price rank | Replit: price rank | bochka: price rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Software factory 100 at once · 4 vCPU / 8 GB · 2,200 sessions of 8 h a month A software factory starts many agents from code; Railway can do that with sandboxes destroyed when idle, while Replit's outside entry point is an MCP server that drives Replit Agent one app at a time. | 51st of 367, with limits $342 a month | 181st of 367, with limits $2,000 a month | 3rd cheapest of 367 $634 a month |
| Always-on AI employees 50 machines 24/7 · 2 vCPU / 4 GB Railway fits an always-on assistant with the idle timeout set to 0 or a Cloud Agent, while on Replit each one is a Reserved VM, a published app that bills all month. | 16th cheapest of 366 $3,977 a month | 202nd of 366, with limits $2,033 a month | 5th cheapest of 366 $657 a month |
| Code interpreter bursts 100 at once · 1 vCPU / 2 GB · 200,000 sessions of 1 min a month Replit's Autoscale scales to zero, so short runs come to $146 a month there against $413 on Railway, though Railway sandboxes are the ones built for running code. | 36th cheapest of 345 $413 a month | 228th of 345, with limits $146 a month | 186th of 345, with limits $2,000 a month |
| Sandboxes for your users 300 at once · 2 vCPU / 4 GB · 30,000 sessions of 23 min a month Railway allows 100 sandboxes per environment on Pro, and Replit does not publish how many deployments can run at once, so 300 machines for your users is a stretch on both. | 42nd of 361, with limits $290 a month | 233rd of 361, with limits $825 a month | Cheapest of 361 $209 a month |
| RL rollouts 1,000 at once · 2 vCPU / 4 GB · 1,000,000 sessions of 3 min a month | 78th of 360, with limits $4,450 a month | 258th of 360, with limits $4,226 a month | 34th of 360, with limits $2,000 a month |
| Agent evals 250 at once · 4 vCPU / 8 GB · 15,000 sessions of 20 min a month Railway can fork a running sandbox and boot many from one checkpoint, which Replit has no API for; bochka forks running sandboxes too, with no idle destroy. | 108th of 364, with limits $364 a month | 265th of 364, with limits $685 a month | 10th cheapest of 364 $200 a month |
| CI runners 40 at once · 8 vCPU / 16 GB · 6,000 sessions of 12 min a month CI jobs that build containers need Docker, which bochka has on every machine and neither Railway's sandbox docs nor Replit's Nix-based setup describe. | 113th cheapest of 377 $1,210 a month | 275th of 377, with limits $425 a month | 4th cheapest of 377 $86 a month |
| 24/7 dev boxes 1 machine 24/7 · 4 vCPU / 8 GB Railway's Cloud Agents keep a disk but are early access and fixed at 4 vCPU / 4 GB on Pro; a Replit workspace is good for coding by hand but has no Docker or systemd. | 66th cheapest of 368 $89 a month | 165th of 368, with limits $109 a month | 18th cheapest of 368 $26 a month |
| Computer-use agents 50 at once · 4 vCPU / 8 GB · 20,000 sessions of 15 min a month Railway sandboxes are headless and Replit's VNC pane shows a desktop only to a person in the workspace, so computer-use agents fit only as a compromise on both. | 77th of 369, with limits $103 a month | 190th of 369, with limits $619 a month | 6th cheapest of 369 $200 a month |
| Browser-use agents 50 at once · 2 vCPU / 4 GB · 30,000 sessions of 10 min a month | 53rd of 367, with limits $93 a month | 229th of 367, with limits $317 a month | 7th cheapest of 367 $200 a month |
| Scraping & bots (startup scale) 50 at once · 1 vCPU / 2 GB · 100,000 sessions of 3 min a month | 60th cheapest of 346 $570 a month | 234th of 346, with limits $217 a month | 6th cheapest of 346 $90 a month |
| Mass scraping & bots (undetectable) 1,000 at once · 1 vCPU / 2 GB · 3,000,000 sessions of 2 min a month | 109th of 338, with limits $2,988 a month | 150th of 338, with limits $4,378 a month | 71st of 338, with limits $1,800 a month |
| Parallel red teaming 200 at once · 2 vCPU / 4 GB · 5,000 sessions of 30 min a month | 43rd of 360, with limits $574 a month | 208th of 360, with limits $215 a month | 2nd cheapest of 360 $200 a month |
| GPU eval jobs 10 at once · 8 vCPU / 32 GB · 500 sessions of 30 min a month | Can't run it | Can't run it | Can't run it |
| macOS agents 5 at once · 4 vCPU / 8 GB · 1,000 sessions of 20 min a month | Can't run it | Can't run it | Can't run it |
Key features
| Feature | Railway | Replit | bochka |
|---|---|---|---|
| Kind of product | App platform for services and databases, with sandbox VMs added in 2026 | AI app builder with browser workspaces and app hosting | Sandboxes you create, stop and fork by API, SDK or CLI |
| Isolation | Sandboxes are isolated Linux VMs; app services are containers | Not documented; the security page says strong logical separation between users | Every sandbox is a full VM with its own kernel |
| Creating machines from code | CLI and TypeScript SDK to create sandboxes, run commands, fork and destroy | MCP server tools to create, update and publish apps; no API to start many machines | API, SDK and CLI to create, stop, resume and fork many sandboxes |
| Docker and nested virtualization | Root shell on Ubuntu; the sandbox docs do not mention Docker or /dev/kvm | System packages come from Nix; the docs do not describe Docker, systemd or /dev/kvm | Docker, root, systemd and /dev/kvm on every machine |
| Files over time | Destroyed after the idle timeout (30 minutes by default); files survive only in checkpoints you take | Workspace files and Agent checkpoints at milestones; published apps should not rely on their filesystem | Disk kept with snapshots every minute and on stop; a stopped sandbox costs nothing |
| Coding agents | Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode and Pi preinstalled; you run them headless through exec | Replit Agent, which you can also drive from an MCP client (create, update, ask, publish) | Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode and more preinstalled, with a prompt, steer and events API |
| Keeping keys out of the machine | Secrets go into the sandbox as environment variables, or are signed in and saved in a checkpoint | Replit manages keys for OpenAI, Anthropic, Google and OpenRouter models; other keys are secrets in the app | AI credentials proxy for model providers and any HTTPS API you register; switch a credential to another account when credits run out |
| Desktop and computer use | Headless: terminal, exec and SSH only | VNC pane that streams a native desktop to your browser; no computer-use API | 60fps desktop and Chromium, computer use and browser control, embeddable stream |
| Reaching the machine | Up to 10 public HTTPS domains per sandbox, set only at creation; SSH and port forwarding | Published apps on HTTPS domains, custom domains and private deployments; SSH into the workspace on paid plans | HTTPS URLs for up to 50 ports, token-protected; raw TCP; dedicated IPv6 or IPv4; SSH |
| Always-on machine | Set the idle timeout to 0, or use a Cloud Agent (early access, 4 vCPU / 4 GB on Pro) | Reserved VM runs continuously at a fixed monthly price per size | Any sandbox can run for weeks, and stopping it ends the bill |
| Apps and databases next to it | Postgres, Redis and services in the same project; a sandbox can join their private network | Postgres and App Storage built into each app; Autoscale apps sleep after 15 minutes idle | No hosted databases or app services; run your own inside a sandbox |
| Machines at once | 50 sandboxes per environment on Hobby, 100 on Pro; Enterprise can ask for more | Not published for deployments | 100 to 2,000 by plan |
| Regions | US West, US East, Amsterdam and Singapore; new sandboxes start in US West | Published apps in North America, Europe, Asia, South America or Australia on Core and up; data mainly in the US | EU only: Germany, Finland, France |
Every feature Battleships tracks (43)
| Feature | Railway | Replit | bochka |
|---|---|---|---|
| Full VM (own kernel) | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Docker inside | Not published | No | Yes |
| Nested virtualization | No | No | Yes |
| Root | Yes | Not published | Yes |
| Systemd | Not published | No | Yes |
| Desktop GUI | No | Yes | Yes |
| Browser | Yes | No | Yes |
| Computer-use API | No | No | Yes |
| SSH | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Persistent disk | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Pause/resume | Yes | No | Yes |
| Automatic snapshots | No | Yes | Yes |
| Fork/clone | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Live fork (no pause) | Yes | No | Yes |
| Memory fork | No | No | No |
| Custom image (Docker or snapshot) | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| ≥24 h sessions | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Idle auto-stop | Yes | Yes | No |
| Wake on request | No | Yes | No |
| HTTPS preview URLs | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Raw TCP inbound | No | Not published | Yes |
| Public IPv4 | No | No | No |
| Egress allowlist | No | No | No |
| Secret proxy | No | Yes | Yes |
| Secret proxy for any API | No | No | Yes |
| Preinstalled agents | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Agent harness API | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| MCP server | Yes | Yes | No |
| GPU | No | No | No |
| Windows | No | No | No |
| Arm64 | No | Not published | No |
| Self-hosting | No | No | No |
| BYOC | Yes | No | No |
| Open source | No | No | No |
| Scoped API keys | Not published | Not published | Yes |
| Spend limits | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Usage per sandbox (API) | No | Yes | Yes |
| Audit logs | Yes | Yes | No |
| SSO | Yes | Yes | No |
| SOC 2 | Yes | Yes | No |
| HIPAA | Yes | No | No |
| EU data residency | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Zero data retention | Not published | Not published | Yes |
Performance
There is no comparable measurement for either of them. bochka did 26.69 Node.js build-and-test runs per second at 4 vCPU / 8 GB in StarSling's public benchmark, but neither Railway nor Replit has a result in that benchmark, so we cannot say which of the three is faster.
Node.js build-and-test loop at 4 vCPU / 8 GB, higher is better. Measured with the open hpc-sandbox-benchmarks suite. Railway and Replit have no published run in this suite yet, so there is no like-for-like number to compare.
Pricing in five scenarios
Each bill is priced from the providers' public price lists by the open Battleships engine, with the cheapest plan that runs the scenario.
| Scenario | Railway, a month | Replit, a month | bochka, a month |
|---|---|---|---|
| One coding agent, workdays 4 vCPU / 8 GB, 50 GB disk, 8 hours a day, 22 days a month, files kept between days | $16 · Hobby · with limits | $122 · Pro $100 (annual) · with limits | $20 · $20/mo |
| One agent that never stops 4 vCPU / 8 GB, 50 GB disk, running 24/7 all month | $70 · Hobby · with limits | $122 · Pro $100 (annual) · with limits | $26 · $20/mo |
| 50 agents in parallel 50 machines of 4 vCPU / 8 GB at once, 8-hour sessions, 1,100 sessions a month, Docker inside | $739 · Hobby · with limits | $1,330 · Pro $1,000 (annual) · with limits | $317 · $20/mo × 3 seats |
| Sandboxes for your users 2 vCPU / 4 GB, 30,000 sessions of 10 minutes a month, up to 300 at once | $223 · Pro · with limits | $403 · Pro $250 (annual) · with limits | $200 · $100/mo × 2 seats |
| 1,000 short jobs at once 2 vCPU / 4 GB, 1,000 at once, 3 minutes each, 200,000 jobs a month | $781 · Pro · with limits | $825 · Pro $1,000 (annual) · with limits | $2,000 · $2000/mo · with limits |
Railway: Railway bills sandboxes per second at $50 per vCPU-month on CPU actually used and $50 per GB-month on memory in use, plus $0.05 per GB out, and memory keeps billing while a sandbox waits. The Hobby ($5) and Pro ($20) fees count toward usage, and sandbox disk has no published price, so our bills leave it out.
Replit: Replit plans (Core $20, Pro from $100) turn into monthly credits for Agent work and hosting, then usage goes on to pay-as-you-go. A Reserved VM has a fixed monthly price per size, such as $130 for 4 vCPU / 16 GB, so our bills price agents as Reserved VMs and leave out Agent usage.
Replit: You pick a monthly plan from $20, and all of it becomes usage credit spent per second on running sandboxes. A stopped sandbox costs nothing and keeps its disk.
Limits in those scenarios
Both are marked as not a clean fit in every scenario because they are app platforms first. Railway caps sandboxes per environment, 50 on Hobby and 100 on Pro, destroys idle sandboxes after 30 minutes by default, and does not price sandbox disk. Replit runs one always-on agent as one published Reserved VM app that bills all month, does not publish how many can run at once, and does not document Docker. On bochka, the 1,000-job burst is queued above 90 starts a minute and needs more starts per day than the $2,000 plan allows.
| Scenario | Railway | Replit | bochka |
|---|---|---|---|
| One coding agent, workdays |
|
| None that bite |
| One agent that never stops |
|
| None that bite |
| 50 agents in parallel |
|
| None that bite |
| Sandboxes for your users |
|
| None that bite |
| 1,000 short jobs at once |
|
|
|
Which one should you use?
Use Railway when
your program needs to create short-lived VMs by API, bill short jobs on CPU used, or run sandboxes next to apps and databases you already host on Railway.
- Sandboxes your code creates. Useful if your program needs machines: Railway's CLI and TypeScript SDK create, fork and destroy VMs, which Replit has no API for.
- Short jobs that bill for CPU used. Useful for many quick code runs: a Railway sandbox meters CPU actually used and is gone when the job ends.
- Sandboxes next to your services. Useful if your app runs on Railway: a sandbox can join the private network of your Postgres, Redis and services.
Use Replit when
you want Replit Agent to build a web app from a description and host it for you, with databases, sleeping when idle, and regions on five continents.
- An app built and hosted for you. Useful if you want a working app from a description: Replit Agent writes, tests and publishes it with Postgres and storage.
- Hosting that costs nothing when idle. Useful for web apps with uneven traffic: Autoscale wakes on the first request and costs nothing while idle.
- Regions on five continents. Useful if your users are spread out: Replit publishes apps in North America, Europe, Asia, South America and Australia.
Where bochka fits
Railway and Replit are both app platforms first, and both are marked as a compromise for most agent jobs we priced. If what you are really running is agents that work for hours, need Docker or a browser, and are started and steered by your own code, bochka gives each one a full VM built for that.
A disk that stays while agents wait
A Railway sandbox is destroyed after 30 idle minutes unless you take checkpoints, and turning the timeout off keeps memory billing. A Replit Reserved VM bills all month. A bochka sandbox stops, keeps its disk and costs nothing stopped.
Root, Docker and KVM
Railway's sandbox docs do not mention Docker or /dev/kvm, so you install and verify them yourself, and Replit builds environments from Nix packages. Every bochka sandbox has root, systemd, Docker and /dev/kvm on its own kernel.
Agents driven from outside, with a screen
On Railway you run agents headless through exec with keys inside as environment variables; Replit's MCP server drives only Replit Agent. bochka adds a prompt, steer and events API, a credentials proxy and a 60fps desktop.
Use bochka when your agents work for hours or days: a full VM that keeps its disk, with Docker, a desktop, and coding agents you drive by API while their keys stay outside. Compare it one to one: bochka vs Railway and bochka vs Replit.
Questions people ask
Is Railway cheaper than Replit?
For agent machines, yes in every scenario we priced, mostly because a Replit Reserved VM bills all month. 50 agents in parallel come to $739 on Railway and $1,330 on Replit, and sandboxes for your users come to $223 versus $403. Railway's numbers leave out disk, which it does not price, and for short code runs Replit's Autoscale comes to $146 a month against $413 on Railway.
Which is faster, Railway or Replit?
We cannot say. Neither has a result in StarSling's public benchmark, where bochka did 26.69 Node.js build-and-test runs per second at 4 vCPU / 8 GB.
Can Railway or Replit run Docker?
Railway's sandbox docs give you a root shell on Ubuntu but do not mention Docker or /dev/kvm. Replit sets up environments with Nix packages and does not describe running Docker inside a workspace or a published app. Every bochka sandbox is a full VM with root, systemd, Docker and /dev/kvm.
Can I start machines from my own code on Replit like Railway sandboxes?
Not in the same way. Railway's CLI and TypeScript SDK create, fork and destroy sandbox VMs. Replit's MCP server lets an MCP client create, update and publish apps through Replit Agent, with no API to start many machines.
Where does my data run?
Railway has regions in California, Virginia, Amsterdam and Singapore, and new sandboxes start in US West unless you pick one. Replit hosts data mainly on Google Cloud in the United States, and on Core and up publishes apps in North America, Europe, Asia, South America or Australia. bochka runs only in the EU, in Germany, Finland and France.
Is bochka SOC 2 compliant?
SOC 2 is in progress. We're open about where we stand: live status at status.bochka.xyz and our data retention policy at docs.bochka.xyz/data-retention.
Try bochka
Install the CLI, then run bochka new.
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