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Fly.io pricing & sleep-to-zero — the fine print

Detail page for Fly.io. The highest-staleness claims — pricing, the free trial, and the sleep-to-zero trade — dated and sourced.

Last verified: 2026-06-07 · checked against fly.io/docs + pricing.

No permanent free tier — and a card is required

Fly is usage-based / pay-as-you-go. New accounts get a free trial of 2 machine-hours or 7 days, whichever ends first (10 machines, 20 GB volume). [confirmed] No card is needed to start the trial, but one is required to deploy past it — "All organizations… require a credit card on file." [confirmed] Trial machines auto-stop after 5 minutes; the app stops entirely if no card is added.

Small machines are cheap; idle ones are free

The smallest always-on machine (shared-cpu-1x, 256 MB) is ≈ $2.02/month; outbound data is $0.02/GB in NA/EU. [confirmed] Set the app to sleep when idle (auto_stop_machines = "stop", min_machines_running = 0) and a low-traffic share drops toward $0 — you don't pay CPU/RAM while it's stopped. [confirmed]

The trade: a short cold-start on the first hit after idle — Fly confirms a wake-from-stopped delay but doesn't publish a figure, so the ~1–2 s here is our estimate. [estimate] After that first wake, it's instant.

In-memory state is lost between sleeps

A sleeping app forgets anything held in RAM — fine for a demo, but use a database (Fly volume / Postgres) for anything that must persist. [confirmed]

Re-check before relying on a figure

Pricing has shifted before; confirm live at fly.io/docs/about/pricing before you count on any number. [unclear]

Sources

  • Fly.io pricing — pay-as-you-go; smallest shared-cpu-1x 256 MB ≈ $2.02/mo; egress $0.02/GB (NA/EU); "All organizations… require a credit card on file"
  • Free trial — "2 hours of machine runtime or 7 days… whichever comes first"; 10 machines, 20 GB volume; trial machines auto-stop after 5 min; apps stop if no card added
  • Autostop / autostart machines — auto_stop_machines, auto_start_machines, min_machines_running; stopped machines don't bill CPU/RAM; cold-start on wake