Stedhold vs. Railway and Render
Railway and Render are general hosting platforms. Stedhold is narrower: private apps with a sign-in gate. Here is when each fits.
Short answer
Use Railway or Render for a public product, a database, background workers, or anything that needs more than 512 MB. Use Stedhold when the goal is to let specific people use an app you already built, and you do not want to build sign-in.
Side by side
| Stedhold | Render | Railway | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sign-in in front of the app | Built in (email invitations) | Build it yourself | Build it yourself |
| Sleep when idle | Always, after 15 minutes | Free web services spin down after 15 minutes idle | Optional Serverless mode sleeps a service with no outbound traffic |
| Databases and workers | No | Yes | Yes |
| App size | 0.25 vCPU, 512 MB | Choose an instance type | Usage-based |
| Price | $19 / mo for 3 apps | See render.com/pricing | See railway.com/pricing |
Render and Railway details checked November 2026 from their documentation.
Where Stedhold is weaker
- No databases, cron jobs or background workers.
- One fixed app size today.
- Public GitHub repositories only, for now.
- Only the US East (Ohio) region.