Head-to-head, indicative as of Oct 2026. Prices change — always confirm on the vendor page.
Quick read: pick Fly.io if your workload is apps that need to be close to users everywhere and its included egress fits your traffic shape; pick AWS Lightsail if you need simple sites that still want the aws backbone. For anything latency-sensitive at the edge, cold start row is the tiebreaker.
| Fly.io | AWS Lightsail | |
|---|---|---|
| Type | Global VM platform | Simplified VPS |
| Free tier | Small allowances on paid plan | 3 months free on first instances |
| Paid pricing (indicative) | Pay-as-you-go from ~$2/mo per VM | Flat from ~$5/mo (1GB) |
| Egress | Free tier then billed | 1-5TB included by plan |
| Cold start | ~300ms (Firecracker VMs) | N/A (always-on) |
| Regions | 30+ regions | Major AWS regions |
| Best for | Apps that need to be close to users everywhere | Simple sites that still want the AWS backbone |
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Last reviewed 2026-10-02 · NinjaOps SEO grid · DevOps blog