Cheapest staging environment for a small team.
prices as of · re-ranked daily · 75 qualifying plans
A staging copy of the app runs the same code as production on a smaller box, and the thing that decides its price is not the box but whether your teammates cost extra. We count only plans with 1 GB of memory or more, as a runtime of a stated size, and 75 of the 89 sized instances we read qualify. The cheapest of them is eSmall · 0.5 vCPU · 1 GB at Koyeb, $5.36/mo. Everything the monthly price leaves out is on the row, because on this market that is usually where the rest of the bill is.
The cheapest plan that can do this job is eSmall · 0.5 vCPU · 1 GB at Koyeb: $5.36/mo a month, read 17 Sept 2026.
Cheapest that fits
eSmall · 0.5 vCPU · 1 GB
Koyeb$5.36a month
$5.36/GB-mo · always on
lowest price a month
Most memory for the money
shared-cpu-4x · 8 GB
Fly.io$42.79a month
$5.35/GB-mo · always on
the lowest price per gigabyte on this list
Cheapest somewhere else
shared-cpu-1x · 1 GB
Fly.io$5.70a month
$5.70/GB-mo · always on
the same job on a second platform
What actually matters here
- Seats, not servers
- On a platform that charges per member, a third teammate costs more than the staging box does. That is the number to read first, and it is on every row.
- A gigabyte is the floor
- Staging runs the same build as production. Below a gigabyte the differences between the two environments start being the reason a deploy fails, which is the opposite of what staging is for.
- Idle most of the day
- Nobody is on staging at three in the morning. A plan that sleeps when nothing calls it costs less and nobody waiting on it minds the cold start, so the sleepers are in this list rather than out of it.
- The same platform as production
- Staging on a different platform tests the wrong thing. If production is already somewhere, the honest comparison is that provider's smaller sizes, which its own page lists.
Cheapest 10 a month
- 1Koyeb
eSmall · 0.5 vCPU · 1 GB
0.5 vCPU · 1 GB RAM · always on · transfer 1 TB · $5.36/GB-moEco container instance (no OS or root) · billed per second, Koyeb's own monthly figure · 8 GB local disk is ephemeral · 1 TB egress included
✓ 1 GB RAM✓ always on
$5.36/mo
- 2Fly.io
shared-cpu-1x · 1 GB
1 vCPU · 1 GB RAM · always on · transfer none · metered per GB · $5.70/GB-moMicro-VM billed per second while running; the monthly price is Fly's own figure for a full month · priced at Ashburn, US (cheapest), up to 61% more in other regions · no disk included, Fly Volumes billed per GB · egress metered per GB
✓ 1 GB RAM✓ always on✓ transfer metered
$5.70/mo
- 3Fly.io
shared-cpu-2x · 1 GB
2 vCPU · 1 GB RAM · always on · transfer none · metered per GB · $6.39/GB-moMicro-VM billed per second while running; the monthly price is Fly's own figure for a full month · priced at Ashburn, US (cheapest), up to 62% more in other regions · no disk included, Fly Volumes billed per GB · egress metered per GB
✓ 1 GB RAM✓ always on✓ transfer metered
$6.39/mo
- 4Fly.io
shared-cpu-4x · 1 GB
4 vCPU · 1 GB RAM · always on · transfer none · metered per GB · $7.78/GB-moMicro-VM billed per second while running; the monthly price is Fly's own figure for a full month · priced at Ashburn, US (cheapest), up to 61% more in other regions · no disk included, Fly Volumes billed per GB · egress metered per GB
✓ 1 GB RAM✓ always on✓ transfer metered
$7.78/mo
- 5
DigitalOcean App Platformapps-s-1vcpu-1gb-fixed · 1 shared vCPU · 1 GB
1 vCPU · 1 GB RAM · always on · transfer 100 GB · $10.00/GB-moApp Platform container, billed by the hour with a one cent minimum · 100 GiB outbound transfer included, then metered · no disk included, a managed database is priced separately
✓ 1 GB RAM✓ always on
- 6Fly.io
shared-cpu-1x · 2 GB
1 vCPU · 2 GB RAM · always on · transfer none · metered per GB · $5.35/GB-moMicro-VM billed per second while running; the monthly price is Fly's own figure for a full month · priced at Ashburn, US (cheapest), up to 61% more in other regions · no disk included, Fly Volumes billed per GB · egress metered per GB
✓ 2 GB RAM✓ always on✓ transfer metered
$10.70/mo
- 7Koyeb
eMedium · 1 vCPU · 2 GB
1 vCPU · 2 GB RAM · always on · transfer 1 TB · $5.36/GB-moEco container instance (no OS or root) · billed per second, Koyeb's own monthly figure · 16 GB local disk is ephemeral · 1 TB egress included
✓ 2 GB RAM✓ always on
$10.71/mo
- 8Fly.io
shared-cpu-2x · 2 GB
2 vCPU · 2 GB RAM · always on · transfer none · metered per GB · $5.70/GB-moMicro-VM billed per second while running; the monthly price is Fly's own figure for a full month · priced at Ashburn, US (cheapest), up to 62% more in other regions · no disk included, Fly Volumes billed per GB · egress metered per GB
✓ 2 GB RAM✓ always on✓ transfer metered
$11.39/mo
- 9Fly.io
shared-cpu-6x · 1.5 GB
6 vCPU · 1.5 GB RAM · always on · transfer none · metered per GB · $7.77/GB-moMicro-VM billed per second while running; the monthly price is Fly's own figure for a full month · priced at Ashburn, US (cheapest), up to 62% more in other regions · no disk included, Fly Volumes billed per GB · egress metered per GB
✓ 1.5 GB RAM✓ always on✓ transfer metered
$11.66/mo
- 10DigitalOcean App Platform
apps-s-1vcpu-1gb · 1 shared vCPU · 1 GB
1 vCPU · 1 GB RAM · always on · transfer 150 GB · $12.00/GB-moApp Platform container, billed by the hour with a one cent minimum · 150 GiB outbound transfer included, then metered · no disk included, a managed database is priced separately
✓ 1 GB RAM✓ always on
The job is one extra copy of the app with a gigabyte of memory, reachable by a team of 3. The price ranked here is the runtime's alone. Members are not added into it, because only two of the nine platforms in this index publish a per-seat rate, and totalling the rest at zero would state as a fact something nobody published: each row says what its provider charges for a member, or that it publishes no rate. A staging environment is idle most of the working day, so a plan that stops when nothing calls it is a saving here rather than a fault, and the rows say which do. The price beside each row is the plan's own monthly figure, $5.36/mo at the top of this list, with transfer 1 TB included.
Frequently asked
- What is the cheapest way to a small team's staging?
- eSmall · 0.5 vCPU · 1 GB at Koyeb, $5.36/mo a month. That is 0.5 vCPU · 1 GB RAM · always on · transfer 1 TB · $5.36/GB-mo. Read on 17 Sept 2026.
- What does this page assume?
- The job is one extra copy of the app with a gigabyte of memory, reachable by a team of 3. The price ranked here is the runtime's alone. Members are not added into it, because only two of the nine platforms in this index publish a per-seat rate, and totalling the rest at zero would state as a fact something nobody published: each row says what its provider charges for a member, or that it publishes no rate. A staging environment is idle most of the working day, so a plan that stops when nothing calls it is a saving here rather than a fault, and the rows say which do.
- Why do only 75 plans qualify?
- The job needs 1 GB of memory or more, as a runtime of a stated size. The other 14 rows we read are still in the index; they just cannot do this job as described.
- Does the app stop when nothing calls it?
- None of the 75 qualifying plans is one the provider says stops when idle, which is the floor this page sets.
- How current are these prices?
- Prices are read daily from 9 platforms' own public pages and keyless APIs, and this ranking recomputes with them. Last refresh: 17 Sept 2026.