Resources // Developer Infrastructure

Fly.io

New

Offer Free 7-day trial, then pay-as-you-go

Suits for Non-VC-backedCreatorsOpen-source

Updated Jun 2026

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The offer

Free trial: 2 total VM-hours of runtime or 7 days, whichever comes first, no credit card to start
Trial includes up to 10 machines, 20 GB volume storage, and up to 2 vCPUs / 4 GB RAM per machine
Trial machines auto-stop after 5 min of running to stretch the 2 hours
After the trial: pure usage billing (e.g. shared-cpu-1x 256 MB ≈ $1.94/mo; stopped machines billed only ~$0.15/GB-month rootfs)
40% discount via prepaid machine-reservation blocks once usage is predictable

Who qualifies

Anyone, no payment method to start the trial (adding a card ends the trial and starts billing)
The old always-free allowance is gone for new accounts. Only pre-Oct-2024 Hobby/Launch/Scale orgs keep it
No VC or stage gating; no named startup program
Fly GPUs are deprecated and unavailable after August 1, 2026, not a fit for GPU or AI workloads

Community Insights

Fly.io is well-liked for small projects and apps that need to run near users, and developers still cite the pay-as-you-go plus rapid-scaling model as the thing that makes it worth using. The persistent caveat is reliability: uptime gets mixed reviews. The strategic direction matters too. Fly removed the always-free tier for new users and is deprecating GPUs (gone after August 1, 2026), so any AI or GPU plan should look elsewhere.

Best Practices (from community tips)

Use the trial to deploy one real app and measure. 2 VM-hours goes fast, and trial machines auto-stop at 5 min.
Add a card only when you’re committed. Doing so ends the trial instantly.
Lean on auto-stop / auto-start and stopped-machine pricing (~$0.15/GB-month) to approximate scale-to-zero.
Prepay reservation blocks for 40% off once usage is predictable.
Do not plan GPU or AI workloads on Fly. GPUs are deprecated after August 1, 2026.
For multi-region apps, opt into granular bandwidth pricing to cut cross-region transfer costs.