I like building with serverless containers because it allows me to deploy the same containers I develop with to prod and (typically) allows for scale-to-zero autoscaling which means I don't pay for projects when they aren't being used (which is most of the time). Unfortunately modern clouds are often overly complicated and the pricing is a bit arcane which can make choosing one a bit of a chore.

To solve this I built CloudCompare - a website that aggregates the most important attributes of these serverless container services so they're easier to compare.

In this post we're going to compare several of the most popular cloud serverless container offerings using that aggregation:

• Azure - Container Apps
• Digital Ocean - App Platform
• Google Cloud - Cloud Run
• Railway

Note: prices are up-to-date as of time of writing (2024.09). For latest cloud pricing and comparisons check out CloudCompare.

Cloud Costs by Resource (Monthly)

First we'll start off with base offerings and their monthly costs by resource unit (Ram GB and vCPUs). In particular we're going to surface whether the service allows scale-to-zero because I think this is really important for sustainable side projects.

Azure - Container Apps

• Scale-to-Zero: Yes
• RAM (GB) cost: $7.80
• vCPU cost: $62.40

Digital Ocean - App Platform

• Scale-to-Zero: No (see full investigation)
• RAM (GB) cost: Depends on Configuration
• vCPU cost: Depends on Configuration

Digital Ocean is a weird one where they don't do pricing by resource but instead by a given configuration. See next section for better pricing comparisons by config.

Google Cloud - Cloud Run

• Scale-to-Zero: Yes
• RAM (GB) cost: $6.50
• vCPU cost: $62.40

Railway

• Scale-to-Zero: Yes
• RAM (GB) cost: $10
• vCPU cost: $10

Common Cloud Configuration Costs (Monthly)

Base resource unit costs can be hard to reason about for real projects so here we'll aggregate these into common cloud configurations you might use to host a serverless container. This basically means a small server with a given amount of RAM and vCPUs.

Note that these costs are if you run the server for the whole time (here a full month). If the service allows for scale-to-zero and your app doesn't get much traffic then often you'll only need to pay a fraction of that amount.

As an example - I use Google Cloud Run to host this website and only pay $1 per month to host it.

0.5 GB RAM, 1 vCPU

• Azure - Container Apps: $66.30
• Digital Ocean - App Platform: $5
• Google Cloud - Cloud Run: $65.65
• Railway: $15

1 GB RAM, 1 vCPU

• Azure - Container Apps: $70.20
• Digital Ocean - App Platform: $12
• Google Cloud - Cloud Run: $68.90
• Railway: $20

2 GB RAM, 1 vCPU

• Azure - Container Apps: $78
• Digital Ocean - App Platform: $25
• Google Cloud - Cloud Run: $75.40
• Railway: $30

4 GB RAM, 2 vCPU

• Azure - Container Apps: $156
• Digital Ocean - App Platform: $50
• Google Cloud - Cloud Run: $150.80
• Railway: $60

Next

For full-fledged enterprise systems it's likely that you'll want to compare cloud hosts by other factors like authorization, tertiary offerings, ecosystem of billing etc. But for small builders like myself often you just want a simple comparison so you can stop planning and start building.

CloudCompare is in active development so please let me know if you have any feedback - things to change, more services to add, corrections to make etc.

If you liked this post you might also like:

• How I host my Server-Side-Rendered F# site on Google Cloud for less than $1 per month
• How I host side projects for $5 per month on Digital Ocean without managing servers
• The HAM Stack - A Simple Scalable Tech Stack for building modern web apps fast and cheap