Does Ruby on Rails Work With Railway?

Fully CompatibleLast verified: 2026-02-20

Ruby on Rails deploys seamlessly on Railway with first-class support for Rails apps, databases, and background jobs.

Quick Facts

Compatibility
full
Setup Difficulty
Easy
Official Integration
Yes ✓
Confidence
high
Minimum Versions
Ruby on Rails: 6.0

How Ruby on Rails Works With Railway

Railway provides native Rails support through its plugin system and Procfile detection. When you connect your Rails GitHub repo to Railway, it automatically detects the framework, installs dependencies via Bundler, runs migrations, and serves your app. Railway handles environment variables seamlessly—you define them in the dashboard and they're injected at runtime, perfect for Rails' `ENV[]` patterns. The platform supports PostgreSQL, Redis, and MySQL plugins that integrate directly with Rails' database.yml through auto-generated connection strings. You get zero-config deploys for most Rails apps: just connect your repo, Railway detects the Procfile or infers `rails server`, and your app is live. For production workloads, Railway manages SSL/TLS, custom domains, and automatic deployments on git push. Background jobs work well with Active Job + Sidekiq or Delayed Job since Railway supports persistent services and can scale web/worker dynos independently.

Best Use Cases

→MVP launches and startups needing database + app hosting without DevOps overhead
→Rails monoliths with Active Job background processing and PostgreSQL
→Hobby projects and staging environments with auto-deploy from git
→Multi-service Rails architectures with API separations and shared databases

Rails Procfile for Railway Deployment

bash
No installation needed; add Procfile to your Rails root directory
bash
# Procfile
release: bundle exec rails db:migrate
web: bundle exec rails server -b 0.0.0.0 -p $PORT
worker: bundle exec sidekiq -c 5 -v

# config/database.yml (Railway auto-injects DATABASE_URL)
production:
  <<: *default
  database: <%= ENV['DATABASE_URL'] %>

# config/cable.yml for ActionCable with Redis
production:
  adapter: redis
  url: <%= ENV['REDIS_URL'] %>
  channel_prefix: myapp_production

Known Issues & Gotchas

warning

Cold starts on Railway's free tier can cause Rails boot delays

Fix: Use paid tier for production apps, or pre-warm with monitoring pings. Consider using `bootsnap` gem to reduce Rails boot time.

critical

Database migrations may fail silently if Procfile `release` phase isn't configured

Fix: Add `release: bundle exec rails db:migrate` to Procfile before `web` process. Railway won't auto-run migrations.

warning

Asset precompilation can timeout on large Rails apps during deploy

Fix: Set `RAILS_ENV=production` and use `config.assets.compile = false`. Pre-compile locally or use Railway's larger build instances.

info

Environment variable names must match Rails conventions (no spaces, uppercase)

Fix: Use Railway's variable editor carefully; copy-paste from your local `.env.local` to avoid typos.

Alternatives

  • •Heroku + PostgreSQL: More mature, expensive; similar DX but steeper pricing
  • •Render + Postgres: Direct Heroku competitor with git-based deploys; slightly cheaper
  • •DigitalOcean App Platform: More infrastructure control, requires Dockerfile; lower cost at scale

Resources

docsRailway Ruby on Rails DocumentationdocsRailway Environment Variables & SecretsgithubDeploying Rails to Railway (Community Guide)docsRailway Pricing & Plan Tiers

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