Backend Platforms 2026

Railway vs AWS vs Azure vs GCP vs Firebase vs Cloudflare — picked for an AI iOS app.

$5-30

Indie /mo on Railway

200+

AWS services

90%

Of cost = AI API

Pick to start

By cost at small scale (a few thousand MAU)

DEFAULT

Railway

$5-30/mo · Predictable. Push code, get URL.

PaaS

Vercel

$0-20/mo · Hobby tier generous. Web-first.

Edge

Firebase

$0-50/mo · BaaS — least backend code. Lock-in real.

BaaS

Cloudflare Workers

$0-10/mo · Edge-first. Global low latency.

Serverless

AWS

$30-150/mo at small scale. Service breadth. Cost-trap risk real.

Power

Azure

$30-150/mo · Microsoft ecosystem, Azure OpenAI Service.

Enterprise

GCP

$15-80/mo · Cloud Run = cleanest serverless containers.

Dev DX

Pro Tip

Backend hosting is rarely your biggest infra cost. AI API spend (Claude / GPT) typically dwarfs it 5-10×. Optimize there first.

Common Trap

Choosing AWS "in case you scale" before you have users. Burns months learning vs shipping. Start simple — migrate when you must.

Pick by use case

By app maturity stage