Abhishek Jaiswal 
Fly.io has no plans and no platform fee. New organizations are on pay as you go: you pay per second for each Machine while it runs, per GB for volumes and egress, and a monthly price for Managed Postgres. That makes the smallest apps very cheap and puts most of a typical bill on the database. This post goes through each line, using list prices from Fly’s pricing page and docs as of 2026-10-13, and compares Fly’s own example bills with the same stacks elsewhere.
TL;DR
- The smallest Machine, shared-cpu-1x with 256 MB, costs $2.19 a month running continuously. A 512 MB Machine is $3.69 and a 1 GB Machine is $6.70 in Fly’s cheapest regions.
- Extra RAM is $6 per GB per month. Volumes are $0.15 per GB per month on provisioned size. Egress is $0.02 per GB in North America and Europe, $0.04 in Asia Pacific, and $0.12 in Africa and India.
- Managed Postgres starts at $38 a month on the Basic plan, plus $0.28 per GB of storage. Fly’s own example of a small web app with Managed Postgres comes to $43.67, and the database is $38 of it.
- On Ownkube the same small app with a managed Postgres box comes to about $8.50 a month in the Germany region. For a single tiny worker with no database, Fly is the cheaper option.
- Compare your own stack on the cloud cost calculator.
How does Fly.io bill?
Fly bills the organization for resources, with no subscription on top. A Machine is a VM that bills per second while it is started. A stopped Machine bills only its root filesystem, at $0.15 per GB per month. Everything else is a separate line: volumes, snapshots, IP addresses, certificates, egress, and managed services.
Machine prices also vary by region. Fly’s tables use Ashburn and Secaucus, its lowest-priced regions. The same 1 GB Machine that costs $6.70 in Ashburn costs $7.73 in Frankfurt and $8.50 in Singapore.
What do Fly Machines cost?
Fly lists preset sizes. The shared CPU presets suit most web apps; performance presets give dedicated cores.
| Machine | Memory | Per month, running continuously |
|---|---|---|
| shared-cpu-1x | 256 MB | $2.19 |
| shared-cpu-1x | 512 MB | $3.69 |
| shared-cpu-1x | 1 GB | $6.70 |
| shared-cpu-2x | 2 GB | $13.39 |
| performance-1x | 2 GB | $33.00 |
| performance-2x | 4 GB | $66.00 |
| performance-4x | 8 GB | $132.01 |
RAM beyond a preset’s included amount is $6 per GB per month. Machines can auto-stop when idle and start again on the next request, in which case you pay for the running time plus the stopped rootfs.
What else shows up on a Fly bill?
| Item | Fly list price (2026-10-13) |
|---|---|
| Volumes | $0.15 per GB per month, on provisioned size |
| Volume snapshots | $0.08 per GB per month, first 10 GB free |
| Dedicated IPv4 | $2 per month (a shared IPv4 and IPv6 are free) |
| Static egress IP | about $3.60 per month |
| SSL certificates | first 10 hostnames free, then $0.10 per month each |
| Egress, North America and Europe | $0.02 per GB |
| Egress, Asia Pacific, Oceania, South America | $0.04 per GB |
| Egress, Africa and India | $0.12 per GB |
| Support | community free, Standard $29, Premium $199 a month |
Volumes bill on the size you provision, including while detached, so an oversized volume costs money whether or not it holds data.
How much does Fly Managed Postgres cost?
Managed Postgres runs from $38 a month on the Basic plan to $1,922 a month on the largest Performance plan, with storage at $0.28 per GB per month on usage. Fly also documents running Postgres yourself on a Machine with a volume (Fly Postgres, unmanaged). That is far cheaper, a 1 GB Machine and a small volume come to well under $10, and it leaves backups, failover and upgrades to you.
This is the line that decides most Fly bills. In Fly’s own example below, the app costs $5.19 and the database costs $38.28.
What does a real Fly.io bill look like?
These are Fly’s published examples from its pricing docs, priced in Ashburn with Machines running all month.
A small web app with Managed Postgres.
| Item | Monthly cost |
|---|---|
| shared-cpu-1x 512 MB Machine | $3.69 |
| 10 GB volume | $1.50 |
| Managed Postgres, Basic plan | $38.00 |
| 1 GB of Postgres storage | $0.28 |
| 10 GB egress from North America | $0.20 |
| Total | $43.67 |
A Discord bot or background worker running 24/7. One shared-cpu-1x 256 MB Machine at $2.19 plus 1 GB of egress at $0.02 comes to $2.21 a month.
How does the same stack price on Ownkube?
Ownkube meters app CPU and memory on actual use, at about $18 per vCPU per month and $4.50 per GiB per month, and runs databases on flat boxes. A DB 0.5 box (0.25 vCPU, 0.5 GiB) is $4 a month and a DB 1 box (0.5 vCPU, 1 GiB) is $8, with storage at $0.25 per GB per month and 7-day backups on the Personal and Team plans. Egress is $0.02 per GB in the Germany region and $0.13 per GB in the Mumbai region.
| Stack | Fly.io (Ashburn) | Ownkube (Germany region) |
|---|---|---|
| Small web app with managed Postgres, 1 GB of data, 10 GB egress | $43.67 | about $8.50 |
| 24/7 Discord bot, 256 MB | $2.21 | about $2 of usage, inside a $5 plan load |
The Ownkube web app line is an app holding 0.5 GiB at an average of 0.1 vCPU ($4.05), a DB 0.5 box ($4), 1 GB of storage ($0.25), and 10 GB of egress ($0.20). It leaves out the app’s 10 GB volume from Fly’s example.
Two honest caveats. Fly’s managed plans and Ownkube’s database boxes are different products, so compare backups, failover and connection limits before you compare price; on Ownkube, standby replicas come with the Team plan. And for a single tiny worker with no database, Fly’s $2.21 is hard to beat, since Ownkube’s smallest monthly plan loads $5 of credit (unused credit rolls over and never expires, so the rest carries into next month).
Where is Fly.io the right call?
- Multi-region apps. Running Machines close to users in many regions, with private networking between them, is what Fly is built for.
- Tiny always-on workers. At $2.19 a month, the smallest Machine is one of the cheapest places to keep a process running.
- Teams comfortable operating their own database. Unmanaged Postgres on a Machine keeps the bill very low.
Fly gets expensive at the managed database line, and the bill is postpaid, so a misconfigured autoscaler or a large egress month shows up after the fact.
FAQ
Does Fly.io have a free tier?
New organizations are on pay as you go with no free allowance. Fly offers a free trial for new accounts, and organizations on plans discontinued in October 2024 keep the allowances those plans included.
What is the cheapest way to run an app on Fly.io?
A shared-cpu-1x Machine with 256 MB at $2.19 a month, or less if it auto-stops when idle. Add a dedicated IPv4 only if you need one, since the shared IPv4 and IPv6 are free.
Why is my Fly.io bill higher than expected?
The usual causes are Managed Postgres (from $38 a month), volumes billed on provisioned size, Machines in pricier regions, and egress from Asia, Africa or India. The billing page breaks usage down by line.
Is Fly Managed Postgres worth it?
It is if you want Fly to run backups, failover and upgrades, and $38 a month is small next to your other costs. For a side project, a smaller managed box elsewhere or a self-run Postgres Machine is much cheaper.
Where Ownkube fits
If your Fly bill is mostly the database, Ownkube runs the same app with a managed Postgres box from $4 a month, on a prepaid wallet where the bill can never run ahead of your balance. For a broader comparison, see the Fly.io alternative guide. Deploy my first app.
Abhishek Jaiswal · Founder and Engineer
Abhishek Jaiswal is the founder and engineer behind Ownkube, a cloud for personal software. He builds the platform and writes here about cloud cost, migrations, and running production infrastructure in your own AWS account without a DevOps team.