Fly.io review: full-stack apps deployed close to your users
Fly runs full VMs in 35+ regions and bills by the second. Excellent for apps that need state and global presence — bumpy if you want hand-holding.
Fly.io is the easiest way to run a full-stack app with persistent state near your users. The CLI is excellent, deploys are fast, and the multi-region story actually works (including Postgres). It's not for beginners — expect to read docs — but the ceiling is very high.
Last updated Jun 2, 2026
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Pros & cons
PROS
- True multi-region apps with primary/replica DBs
- Fast deploys via fly deploy
- Pay per second of running time
- Persistent volumes + Litefs for SQLite
- Great for Phoenix / Elixir / Rails
CONS
- Steeper learning curve than Vercel
- Postgres ops still require attention
- Pricing model can surprise on egress
- Status page has been busy in 2025
What we tested
30 days running a Remix app with Postgres in 3 regions.
Deploys
fly deploy ships in 40-90 seconds with rolling restarts. Rollback is one command.
Multi-region
Write to primary in one region, read replicas in others. Latency drops from 200ms to 20ms for distant users.
Pricing
- Pay-as-you-go: shared-cpu-1x ~$2/mo idle, scales by second
- Postgres from $2/mo (dev) up to enterprise
- $5/mo egress past the free 160GB
Verdict
The right answer for stateful global apps. The wrong answer if you want a one-click deploy.
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