Run your backend with Railway

Railway is a cloud platform that runs your app (and optional databases) on the internet. You connect a GitHub repo, tell it how to start your app, and it builds and runs it and gives you a public URL.

What it does:

  • Hosts your backend – It runs your Node/Express server (or other runtimes) 24/7 so you get a URL like https://your-app.up.railway.app.

  • Deploy from Git – You connect a repo; every push can trigger a new deploy. No need to upload code by hand.

  • Manages the server – It handles the machine, OS, and process so you don’t manage a VPS yourself.

  • Add-ons – You can attach databases (Postgres, Redis, etc.) and get connection URLs in the environment.

In your setup:

  • Vercel serves your static frontend (the React/Vite app).

  • Railway (or Render, Fly.io, etc.) runs your Express API (npm run start).

  • The frontend uses VITE_API_ORIGIN to call that Railway URL, so /api/* requests go to Railway instead of Vercel.

So Railway is “where your Node/API runs” when you don’t want to run a server yourself. Alternatives that do a similar job: Render, Fly.io, Heroku, Google Cloud Run, AWS, etc.

RailwayFrancesca Tabor