Fly.io vs Netlify

• Fly-io scales from $1.94 to $131.80/mo, while Netlify provides a free tier up to $99.00/mo, though their respective hardware allocations differ significantly.
• Storage costs are cheaper on Netlify at $0.05/GB compared to the $0.15/GB charged by Fly-io.
• Egress penalties show a massive disparity, with Fly-io charging $0.02/GB for excess bandwidth, whereas Netlify hits significantly harder at $0.55/GB.
• Memory density is fixed at 1 GB for Netlify, while Fly-io offers a wider range from 0.256 GB up to 16 GB for more intensive workloads.

Operating on Fly-io requires managing actual container instances, which gives you more control over the runtime environment compared to the static-heavy focus of Netlify. Because Fly-io exposes raw container primitives, it functions much like a standard VPS provider—competing with the likes of DigitalOcean—whereas Netlify is purpose-built for frontend-heavy deployments and edge-cached assets. If your application relies on background workers or complex server-side logic, the RAM flexibility of Fly-io prevents the artificial bottlenecks often found in restrictive PaaS environments. Netlify is generally better suited for high-volume static assets where the 100 GB to 2000 GB egress allowance covers most standard web traffic patterns without triggering their steep $0.55/GB overage fee.

Choosing between these platforms depends on your egress profile and compute needs. Heavy API-driven traffic with high bandwidth consumption is significantly cheaper on Fly-io due to the lower network fees, while projects hosting large media libraries benefit from the lower storage costs on Netlify. You are trading granular control over the container runtime on Fly-io for the ease of deployment and extensive CDN caching included with Netlify.