# cmdz vs a hyperscaler: cost predictability for AI builders > Three concrete workloads priced against the published rates of Vercel, Railway, Render, Fly and Cloudflare — including the two profiles where they win. Three concrete workloads priced against the published rates of Vercel, Railway, Render, Fly and Cloudflare — including the two profiles where they win. 29 Apr 2026 · 4 min read · cmdz Comparisons written by a vendor are worth exactly as much as their willingness to lose. So: three workloads, public rates from July 2026, and the cases where we lose. ## Workload A — the side project A Next.js app with a small Postgres. Ten thousand visitors a month, about 60,000 requests, maybe 20 GB out. | | Monthly | |---|---| | **cmdz** | **€ 7.46** | | Railway | ~$12 (Hobby $5 + usage + $1 egress + database) | | Render | ~$32 (Standard $25 + database $7) | | Vercel | ~$20 (Pro seat; database from a marketplace partner, billed separately) | | Fly.io | ~$9 (two shared-cpu machines + volume + egress) | | Cloudflare | ~$5 (Workers Paid; D1 within free limits) | **Cloudflare wins this one**, if your app fits the Workers model. If you wrote a Next.js app with a Node runtime and a Prisma client, it does not fit without a rewrite, and "rewrite it into isolates" is not a price comparison. Fly is close to us and genuinely comparable on isolation. The difference is the ceiling, not the number. ## Workload B — the app with revenue Laravel with a queue worker, a scheduler, Postgres, Valkey and 20 GB of uploads. 100,000 visitors, about 600,000 requests, 180 GB out. | | Monthly | |---|---| | **cmdz** | **€ 22.68** | | Railway | ~$48 (usage + $9 egress + two databases) | | Render | ~$64 (two instances + database + key-value + $12 egress) | | Vercel | ~$45 (Pro + functions; Laravel is a poor fit regardless) | | Fly.io | ~$34 (four machines + volumes + $3.60 egress) | | Cloudflare | not applicable (no long-lived PHP process) | We win this profile, and the reason is mostly the two managed services and the absence of an egress line. ## Workload C — the one that goes viral Workload B, on the day a post lands. Traffic × 40 for three days: 2.4 TB out, compute peaking at four times normal. | | That month | |---|---| | **cmdz, € 40 of credit** | **€ 40.00** (ran out on day 25) | | **cmdz, € 100 of credit** | **€ 79.20** (never ran out) | | Railway | ~$120 (egress alone $120 at $0.05/GB) | | Render | ~$310 ($0.15/GB beyond the allowance) | | Vercel | ~$260 (Fast Data Transfer beyond 1 TB) | | Fly.io | ~$82 ($0.02/GB) | | Cloudflare | ~$14 (no egress charge) | This is the whole argument on one line. On the day it matters, our number is either the actual usage or the number you chose in advance — and never anything else. Note the two cmdz rows. 2.4 TB of egress is € 48 of the € 79.20 — real money, and the honest reason we are not "free egress". It is also € 312 less than Render would charge for the same traffic. With € 40 of credit the month costs exactly € 40 and the apps paused; with € 100 it costs what it used. Both outcomes are ones you selected in advance. Cloudflare is dramatically cheapest here. Again: only if your app is already isolates. ## Where they are better than us This section is not decoration. **Cloudflare is cheaper than us at volume, and charges no egress.** Nothing VM-based will beat isolates on cost per request. If your app already fits that model, use it. **Vercel's Next.js developer experience is better than ours.** Preview deployments, image optimisation, ISR, the toolbar — years of depth in one framework. We do not win on Next.js depth and we are not going to claim we do. **Fly.io has our isolation quality and global placement.** Firecracker versus Kata is a distinction without a practical difference. They have regions we do not. **Railway has a real hard limit and the best writing MCP in the field.** They are the most dangerous competitor we have. Their limit has a $10 minimum and hitting it takes workloads offline, which they describe as possibly destructive; ours starts at € 0 and pauses rather than terminates. That is a difference of degree, not of kind, and we are not going to pretend it is a difference of kind. **Heroku's add-on ecosystem and Postgres tooling are richer than ours.** Their MCP can do `pg_outliers` and `pg_locks`. We have `cmdz_run_sql` and backups. **Coolify on your own hardware is cheaper than us, full stop.** If you have the time and the knowledge, you should do that. We sell the time and the knowledge, not the servers. ## What we actually claim Not "cheapest". Three things: 1. **Predictable.** The invoice cannot exceed the number you set. On any other platform in this table except Railway and Netlify, it can. 2. **Egress at € 0.02/GB.** Not free — we would rather charge for it than pretend — but 7.5× cheaper than the € 0.15 that Vercel and Render charge, which is where most of the difference in the tables above comes from. 3. **Operable by your agent.** 47 tools with write access, bounded by that same ceiling — which is what makes handing over the keys a reasonable thing to do rather than a brave one. If predictability is not worth anything to you and your traffic is flat and you have the time, Coolify on a Hetzner box is the correct answer and we will not be offended. ## Method Public rates from provider documentation, July 2026. Egress estimated at 350 KB average per request. Every figure is an estimate that depends on assumptions about your traffic; run yours through [the calculator](/pricing#calculator), which will also tell you when they are cheaper than us. Something out of date? Email us. 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