Pricing
Honest pricing.
No spreadsheet required.
We charge for compute, not for features. Every plan gets the same platform — deploys, rollbacks, secrets, logs, TLS, the whole thing. The only difference is scale.
Hobby
Side projects, experiments, learning
- ✓ 1 app
- ✓ 512 MB RAM / 0.5 vCPU
- ✓ Auto-sleep after 30 min idle
- ✓ Shared compute
- ✓ Free TLS + .ancla.dev subdomain
- ✓ Community support
Pro
Production apps, small teams
- ✓ Unlimited apps
- ✓ 2 GB RAM / 1 vCPU per instance
- ✓ No auto-sleep
- ✓ Scale to 10 instances
- ✓ Custom domains
- ✓ Priority support + 99.9% SLA
Team
Growing teams, multiple services
- ✓ Everything in Pro
- ✓ 8 GB RAM / 4 vCPU per instance
- ✓ Scale to 50 instances
- ✓ Team RBAC + audit log
- ✓ Private networking
- ✓ 99.95% SLA + Slack support
Real-world comparison
What 1 vCPU + 2 GB costs per month
A single production app. Always on. No tricks, no asterisks.
Heroku Standard-2X ($50) only includes 1 GB RAM — their Performance-M tier is $250/mo. Railway and Fly.io are usage-based estimates for always-on compute (Railway includes ~$20 resource + plan fee). Prices as of February 2026.
Feature by feature
The full picture
We did the research so you don't have to. Every cell is sourced from public documentation.
| Feature | Ancla Active | Heroku Frozen | Render Active | Railway Active | Fly.io Active | Northflank Active |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Starting Price | Free | $5/mo (Eco, sleeps) | Free (sleeps after 15 min) | $5/mo ($1/mo after trial) | Pay-as-you-go (2 hr trial) | Free (CC required) |
| Cold Starts | No (auto-sleep on Hobby) | 10-30s on Eco | ~60s on free | N/A (no free tier) | N/A | No |
| Zero-downtime Deploys | ✓ All plans | ✓ Paid plans | ✓ Paid (not with disk) | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Instant Rollbacks | ✓ Sub-second | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | Manual | ✓ |
| Managed Postgres | ✓ | ✓ $5 - $24K/mo | ✓ $6+/mo | ✗ Unmanaged containers | Partial (new MPG, gaps) | ✓ $2.70+/mo |
| Egress / Bandwidth Charges | None | None | $15 / 100 GB over | $0.05/GB | $0.02 - $0.12/GB | $0.06/GB |
| Custom Domains (free tier) | ✓ | ✓ | 2 max | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Private Networking | ✓ Team plan | Private Spaces ($125+) | ✓ Professional+ | ✓ WireGuard | ✓ 6PN WireGuard | ✓ |
| Audit Log | ✓ Team plan | Enterprise only | Organization plan | Pro plan | N/A | ✓ |
| BYOC (Bring Your Own Cloud) | ✓ Enterprise | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ |
| Active Development | ✓ | ✗ Feature freeze | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Standard Containers | ✓ OCI native | Buildpacks | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Vendor Lock-in | None (OCI images) | Buildpack-dependent | Low | Low (Railpack) | Low (Docker) | Low (K8s) |
Data sourced from each platform's public pricing and documentation pages. Last verified February 2026.
Enterprise
Bring your own cluster
Run Ancla on your infrastructure. Your cloud, your region, your compliance requirements. We install, maintain, and upgrade the platform. You keep full control of the data plane.
Talk to usEvery plan includes
We don't upsell platform features. These are free on every tier, including Hobby.
Questions
Can I use the free tier for real projects?
Absolutely. The Hobby plan runs real containers on real infrastructure. The only limits are auto-sleep after 30 minutes of inactivity and a single app. Good enough for personal sites, side projects, and demos.
What happens if I go over instance limits?
We'll let you know before anything changes. Ancla doesn't auto-bill you for overages or shut down your running services. You get a heads-up and a grace period to resize or upgrade.
Do you charge for bandwidth?
No. Ingress and egress are included on all plans. We think bandwidth billing is confusing and punitive, so we don't do it.
Can I switch plans anytime?
Yes, upgrades take effect immediately. Downgrades take effect at the end of your billing cycle. No lock-in, no cancellation fees.
What's the difference between managed and self-hosted?
Managed Ancla runs on our infrastructure — you push code, we handle everything else. Self-hosted means we install Ancla on the Cloud of your choice. Same platform, same CLI, but your servers, your data, your compliance story.
Is there a nonprofit or open-source discount?
Yes. Reach out to us directly. We sponsor open-source projects we use and offer significant discounts for nonprofits and educational institutions.
How does Ancla compare to Heroku, Render, Railway, Fly.io, and Northflank?
We did the research so you don't have to. See <a href="/pricing#full-comparison" class="text-primary underline underline-offset-2 hover:text-primary/80">The full picture</a> above for a feature-by-feature comparison across all six platforms.
Why is there no egress charge?
We think bandwidth billing is hostile to developers. You shouldn’t need a calculator to predict your monthly bill. Ancla charges for compute, not for your users visiting your app.
Start free. Scale when you're ready.
No credit card needed for Hobby. Upgrade anytime.
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