Top alternatives to Railway preview environments in 2026
Railway provides PR environments that duplicate services from your base environment when you open a pull request. Teams needing database support, bring-your-own-cloud deployment, or automated teardown scheduling often evaluate alternatives.
Railway offers PR environments that duplicate services and configuration from your base environment.
Alternatives to Railway preview environments:
- Northflank – Provides ephemeral, full-stack preview environments for every pull request. Automatic database cloning from production, built-in secret injection, teardown scheduling, and BYOC support (AWS, GCP, Azure, Civo, Oracle, CoreWeave, on-premises). Orchestrates services, databases, and jobs together. Learn more about Northflank's preview environments
- Render: Blueprint-based preview environments with automatic PR deployment. Requires Preview Environment Initialization for database seeding. Professional workspace plan required.
- Coolify: Preview deployments with scoped environment variables and configurable deployment triggers. Preview URLs use wildcard domains with pull request IDs or random subdomains.
- Fly.io: GitHub Actions-based review apps with custom workflow configuration. Default setup creates a single application; data stores require custom workflow configuration.
For teams outgrowing Railway: If you need production-like data in preview environments, infrastructure control through BYOC deployment, or cost control through scheduled teardowns, Northflank provides ephemeral, full-stack preview environments with database forking, teardown scheduling, and multi-cloud support.
Consider how each platform handles database management, cost control, and infrastructure deployment.
Evaluate whether the platform provides automatic database forking or cloning from production for preview environments.
Consider whether preview environments can be automatically deleted based on idle time, working hours, or PR lifecycle. Platforms offering idle detection and schedule-based teardown help control infrastructure costs.
Determine whether you can deploy on your own cloud infrastructure. BYOC platforms let you deploy preview environments in your AWS, GCP, or Azure accounts.
Evaluate whether the platform uses visual templates, YAML configuration, or infrastructure-as-code. Platforms with visual template builders reduce context-switching between configuration files and services.
The following platforms provide preview environment capabilities with different approaches to database management, orchestration, and infrastructure control.
Northflank provides preview environments designed for full-stack applications requiring automated database management and complete stack orchestration.
- Preview environment capabilities: Preview environments include databases (PostgreSQL, MySQL, MongoDB, Redis), microservices, and background jobs. Each preview is configured using visual templates in pipelines.
- Database forking: You can back up and create a fork of an existing database. The original database in your permanent environment is unaffected by changes in the preview branch. Use the latest backup to create a new addon as a fork of the existing addon.
- Secret management: Secrets and environment variables automatically scope per preview environment. Secret groups are restricted by the preview environment's tag so only resources in the environment inherit variables from it. Teams define secrets once using arguments and overrides.
- Full-stack templates: Define complete application stacks including services, databases, jobs, and cron tasks in visual templates. Templates use references and arguments to programmatically provision resources.
- Teardown scheduling and cost control: Configure preview environments to be torn down after a certain amount of time. Set preview environments to only be created automatically during certain hours. Duration timers can be reset if the environment is updated with new commits.
- BYOC support: Deploy preview environments on AWS, GCP, Azure, Civo, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, CoreWeave, or on-premises infrastructure while Northflank manages orchestration.
- Git-triggered automation: Configure automatic preview creation on PR events with branch pattern matching. Supports GitHub, GitLab, and Bitbucket with configurable trigger conditions.
- Visual templates: Define complete application stacks including services, databases, jobs, and cron tasks in visual templates. Templates use references and arguments to programmatically provision resources.
How Northflank addresses common pain points
For engineering managers concerned about preview environment costs at scale, teardown scheduling and idle detection prevent resource waste. Preview environments can shut down during off-hours and restart when needed, reducing infrastructure costs.
For platform engineers managing multi-environment YAML configurations, visual templates provide configuration without maintaining separate Blueprint files. Changes apply across all previews consistently.
For backend teams needing production parity, database forking provides realistic data for testing migrations, queries, and application logic.
Learn more about Northflank's preview environment capabilities, see how to set up preview environments with full-stack orchestration, and compare Kubernetes preview environment platforms.
Render provides preview environments that automatically create fresh copies of your production environment on every pull request. Preview environments are defined using Blueprint YAML files synchronized in the Render Dashboard.
Preview environment capabilities:
- Automatic preview environment creation for pull requests
- Creates new instances of services and databases defined in Blueprint
- Preview Environment Initialization for database seeding
- Automatic deletion when pull request merged or closed
- Expiry time configuration for automatic cleanup after inactivity
Coolify provides preview deployments for GitHub repositories. When you enable preview deployments, Coolify automatically deploys new versions when someone opens a pull request. Preview deployments are deleted when the pull request is merged or closed.
Preview deployment capabilities:
- Scoped environment variables separate from production
- Configurable deployment triggers (repository members, collaborators, contributors)
- Automated deployment status comments on pull requests
- Wildcard domain configuration for unique preview URLs
- GitHub App or Webhook-based setup
Fly.io provides review apps through GitHub Actions. The default workflow creates a single application. Teams can customize the GitHub Actions workflow to add data stores like Redis and Memcached.
Review app capabilities:
- GitHub Actions-based review app deployment
- Single application deployment by default
- Custom workflow configuration for data stores (Redis, Memcached)
- Resource specifications via workflow inputs (vmsize, cpu, memory)
- Secrets and environment variables via GitHub repository configuration
| Your requirement | Recommended alternative | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Automatic database forking from production | Northflank | Forks databases via backup and restore |
| Full-stack orchestration (services, databases, jobs) | Northflank | Complete application stacks with database support |
| BYOC deployment on your infrastructure | Northflank | Supports AWS, GCP, Azure, Civo, Oracle, CoreWeave, on-premises |
| Self-hosted with complete infrastructure control | Coolify | Runs on your own servers |
| GitHub Actions-based workflows | Fly.io | Custom workflows with configurable resources |
| Automated teardown scheduling | Northflank | Idle detection, schedule-based cleanup, duration limits |
| Blueprint-based preview environments | Render | Creates fresh instances with initialization scripts |
Northflank forks production databases into preview environments using backup and restore. Render creates fresh database instances and requires Preview Environment Initialization for database seeding. Coolify and Fly.io require custom configuration for database provisioning in preview environments.
Railway, Render, and Coolify automatically delete preview environments when PRs merge or close. Fly.io's GitHub Actions workflow destroys review apps when PRs close. Northflank provides additional teardown options including idle detection and schedule-based cleanup.
Northflank deploys preview environments on your AWS, GCP, Azure, Civo, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, CoreWeave, or on-premises infrastructure while managing orchestration. Railway, Render, and Fly.io run on their managed infrastructure.
Preview environments scale with the number of active pull requests. Platforms offering automatic teardown and cost tracking help control infrastructure spending as teams grow.
For teams building full-stack applications, preview environments should provide production-like testing without manual configuration overhead. Learn about Northflank's preview environment capabilities for automated database forking, full-stack orchestration, and flexible infrastructure deployment.
For broader context on preview environments, see what and why of preview environments and compare preview environment platforms.