Continue vs Railway — Pricing, Plans, and Verified Costs (2026)
Continue starts at Free. Railway starts at $5/mo. Continue is $5/mo cheaper on the entry tier than Railway.
How pricing works
These two tools don't price the same way, so the headline numbers below aren't directly comparable until you plug in your own volume.
- Continue (Per Seat) — Continue bills on a fixed plan, so the listed price is what you pay regardless of volume.
- Railway (Hybrid) — Railway is hybrid: a fixed subscription from $5/mo plus metered usage on top (Usage credits). Your real bill moves with volume, not seat count.
Per-minute, per-credit and per-token rates exclude any downstream model, speech or telephony costs unless the vendor states otherwise.
Open-source AI code assistant that runs as an extension in VS Code, JetBrains, and other editors. Individual use is free (BYOK for LLM). Continue for Teams costs $10/user/mo and adds shared prompts, custom AI blocks, and analytics. Enterprise adds SSO, on-prem, and custom integrations. Positioned as the open-source alternative to GitHub Copilot with full customization of models and prompts.
Modern PaaS positioned as the alternative to Heroku for developers who want git-push-to-deploy simplicity plus per-resource billing. Distinctive for its usage-based pricing (compute per GB-hour, RAM per GB-hour) versus flat dyno pricing at Heroku. Free trial credits give hobby projects room; production apps typically $20-$500/mo. YC-backed, popular with indie hackers and Series A/B startups.
All plans compared
| Tier role | Plan | Continue monthly | Continue annual | Railway monthly | Railway annual |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free / starter | — / Free Trial | — | — | Free | — |
| Entry paid | — / Hobby | — | — | $5 | — |
| Pro / power | — / Pro | — | — | $20 | — |
| Enterprise | — / Enterprise | — | — | Custom | Custom |
Tier names differ across vendors. Rows are aligned by tier role, not name. Full tier structures on each tool's page.
What each is best for
Continue is worth it if… developers and teams that want to customize their AI coding stack — choose your own model, write custom prompts, share blocks across the team. Individual tier is free with BYOK; Teams ($10/user/mo) is the cheapest way to standardize prompts across a team.
Railway is worth it if… developers building side projects or small production apps who want Heroku-style ease with modern pricing — deploy any GitHub repo in one click, scale to serverless functions. Hobby covers indie dev use; Pro adds team features and higher limits.
Bottom line: Choose based on how you want to pay — Continue is per seat, Railway is hybrid.
Choose Continue over Railway if…
Choose Continue if…
- You want fixed-price predictability (per seat, a free entry tier).
- You match the profile Continue is built for: developers and teams that want to customize their AI coding stack — choose your own model, write custom prompts, share blocks across the team.
- You need a general-purpose developer & infrastructure option rather than a vertical-specific one.
Choose Railway if…
- You're fine with a base subscription plus metered usage on top (from $5/mo).
- You match the profile Railway is built for: developers building side projects or small production apps who want Heroku-style ease with modern pricing — deploy any GitHub repo in one click, scale to serverless functions.
- You need a general-purpose developer & infrastructure option rather than a vertical-specific one.
At a glance
| Continue | Railway | |
|---|---|---|
| Free plan | No | Yes |
| Entry price | Free | $5/mo |
| Enterprise available | No | Yes |
| Pricing model | Per Seat | Hybrid |
| Last verified | September 20, 2026 | September 14, 2026 |
| Full pricing | View full pricing | View full pricing |
Pricing last verified September 20, 2026. Tracked daily.