Railway Deployment for AI-Built Apps: What Works
I tested this myself. Here is the honest take.
How does Railway compare to Vercel for AI apps?
Railway is better than Vercel for backend-heavy AI apps. Built-in PostgreSQL, longer timeout limits, cron job support. The AI generates a correct railway.toml about 70% of the time. But it always assumes the database exists already.
What database setup does the AI miss?
The AI never generates database migration scripts that run on deploy. I deployed an app that tried to insert data into a table that did not exist yet. Fix: add a pre-deploy hook that runs migrations automatically. The railway.toml supports this with predeploy commands.
How do you handle background jobs?
Railway handles background jobs better than Vercel. The $5/mo starter plan includes cron job support. The AI can generate the cron config if you specify “write a railway.toml with a scheduled job that runs daily at 2am.” About 80% success rate on first try.
Railway: built-in PostgreSQL, longer timeouts, cron jobs, $5/mo starter. AI gets database migrations wrong consistently. Add predeploy migration hooks manually.
Railway is the most underrated deployment platform for AI-built apps. Vercel gets all the marketing attention. But Railway handles the backend pieces that AI apps actually need — databases, cron jobs, WebSockets. If your AI app has a backend, use Railway. Save Vercel for the frontend.
I need to [task]. Give me the exact steps and common mistakes.
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