Northflank

Northflank is a developer cloud that lets you deploy containers, databases, jobs and GPU workloads on Northflank’s managed infrastructure or, uniquely, inside your own AWS, GCP or Azure account — all from one Heroku-style UI, CLI and API. We rate it 86/100 — one of the most complete production-grade PaaS options in 2026, especially for teams that have outgrown Render or Railway and want real Bring-Your-Own-Cloud (BYOC) without rebuilding on raw Kubernetes.

What is Northflank?

Northflank was founded in 2019 in London by Will Stewart (CEO) and Frederik Brix (CTO) to give engineering teams the power of Kubernetes with the simplicity of a PaaS. Instead of forcing you to choose between a managed sandbox and a self-managed cluster, Northflank runs your services, databases, cron jobs and AI workloads on the same control plane — either on Northflank’s multi-region cloud or, with one cluster install, inside your own cloud account.

The company raised a $22.3M Series A led by Bain Capital Ventures on November 11, 2024, with Vertex Ventures US, Kindred, Tapestry VC, Pebblebed and Uncorrelated also participating, bringing total funding to roughly $25M. By 2026 Northflank claims 70,000+ developers shipping production workloads on the platform, 130B+ requests processed and 330+ availability zones, with customers including Sentry, Writer and Weights powering serious AI infrastructure on it.

Key Features of Northflank

• True Bring-Your-Own-Cloud (BYOC): One nf cluster create and Northflank installs its control plane into your AWS, GCP or Azure account — you own the data plane, get static IPs, VPC peering and audit logs, while Northflank gives you the same UI on top. Reach over 600 BYOC regions via the underlying cloud providers.
• Containers, jobs and managed databases in one project: Deploy services from a Dockerfile or buildpack, run cron and one-off jobs, and provision PostgreSQL, MySQL, MongoDB, Redis or RabbitMQ as “addons” that auto-wire credentials into your services.
• GPU workloads, billed by the second: NVIDIA L4 24GB at $0.80/hour, A100 40GB at $1.42/hr, A100 80GB at $1.76/hr, H100 80GB at $2.74/hr and H200 141GB at $3.14/hr — with fractional GPU support, autoscaling and BYOC, which is rare among PaaS providers.
• Pipelines and preview environments: Every PR can spin up a full-stack preview (services + databases) on a unique URL, with templates defined as code via the NorthflankConfig YAML or the JSON API.
• Real-time collaboration and RBAC: Multiple engineers can work in the same project at the same time, with fine-grained role-based access control, secret groups, audit logs and SSO — not buried behind an Enterprise paywall.
• Full automation surface: A REST & GraphQL API, a CLI (northflank), Terraform provider and GitHub Action mean every UI action can be scripted into your CI or platform engineering tooling.
• Multi-region by default: Six core regions on Northflank Cloud (US West/Central/East, EU West, Asia East and more) plus your BYOC clusters in any AWS/GCP/Azure region.

What Users Say About Northflank

Sentiment in the developer community is unusually positive for an infrastructure product. On G2 and review sites, the most repeated praise is that the platform “just works”, that BYOC saved teams material money on GKE/EKS bills, and that founder-led support proactively pings customers when something looks off in their cluster. On Hacker News and Reddit threads about Heroku and Railway alternatives, Northflank is consistently named alongside Render and Fly.io as the option to pick when you need real databases, GPUs or BYOC rather than just a Git push.

Recurring complaints are honest: the UI has a steeper learning curve than Render thanks to its many primitives (services vs jobs vs combined services vs addons), the docs ecosystem is still smaller than AWS/GCP, and Northflank is more expensive than running your own VPS — which is the price you pay for skipping the on-call rotation.

Northflank Pricing

Pricing is unbundled and usage-based. There is a free Sandbox tier you can ship side projects on, a self-service pay-as-you-go tier, and a custom Enterprise tier for SLAs and BYOC at scale.

Plan	Price	Key Limits
Sandbox	$0/month	2 always-on services, 1 database, 2 cron jobs — no sleeping, no card required
Pay-as-you-go	From $2.70/month per service	Compute from $0.01667/vCPU/hr + $0.00833/GB RAM/hr; egress $0.06/GB; disk $0.15/GB/mo; logs $0.20/GB after 10GB free
Enterprise	Custom	BYOC at scale, 24/7 SLA, FDE onboarding, white-label, 100+ enterprise features

A typical “1 vCPU / 2 GB RAM” web service (the nf-compute-100-2 plan) is $24/month, and a Postgres addon on the same plan is similarly priced — comparable to Render’s mid-tier and noticeably cheaper than Heroku Standard once you add a database.

Who Should Use Northflank?

Best for: Seed-to-Series-B startups and platform teams who need preview environments, real managed databases, GPUs and the option to run inside their own cloud account — without hiring a dedicated DevOps engineer to tame raw Kubernetes. AI infra teams running vLLM, TGI or fine-tuning jobs on H100s benefit a lot from per-second GPU billing plus BYOC.

Not ideal for: Solo developers shipping a marketing site or a tiny side project — Render or Railway have a slightly gentler on-ramp, and a $5 VPS is still cheaper if you enjoy on-call. Teams already deep in a hand-rolled Terraform + EKS setup may find Northflank’s opinionated abstractions a tighter fit than their existing workflows.

Pros and Cons

Pros:

• Genuine BYOC (deploy in your own AWS/GCP/Azure) — not just a hosted region selector.
• Per-second GPU billing on H100/H200/A100 with autoscaling, available without a sales call.
• Free Sandbox tier with always-on compute (no “sleeping” dynos like legacy Heroku).
• Full API + CLI + Terraform provider — everything is automatable.
• Strong, founder-led customer support, repeatedly praised in independent reviews.

Cons:

• Steeper learning curve than Render or Railway because there are more primitives to understand.
• Smaller community and tutorial ecosystem than AWS, GCP or Heroku.
• More expensive than rolling your own VPS — you’re paying for the abstractions.
• Closed source — the BYOC model gives you data sovereignty but the control plane is proprietary.

Alternatives to Northflank

If you want a simpler Git-push experience and don’t need BYOC, Render is the obvious comparison — cleaner UI, fewer primitives, no GPU support and no BYOC. Railway is faster to start with and has a beautiful UX but lacks BYOC and managed-database depth. Fly.io wins for global edge deployments and Postgres clusters but doesn’t offer first-class BYOC. For pure Kubernetes power users, Encore or rolling your own EKS will go further than any PaaS.

Verdict: Is Northflank Worth It?

If you’ve outgrown Render or Railway, need GPUs without a sales call, or want to keep production data inside your own cloud account, Northflank is currently the strongest single answer on the market — and the free Sandbox makes it cheap to find out. Solo devs on a single $5 droplet can safely skip; teams with real customers and an AI workload should at minimum migrate one staging service over for a week. Our 86/100 reflects best-in-class BYOC, GPU billing and DX, lightly held back by the learning curve and a still-young ecosystem.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Northflank free?

Yes — Northflank’s Sandbox tier is free forever and includes 2 always-on services, 1 database and 2 cron jobs. After that, pay-as-you-go starts at about $2.70/month per service, or roughly $24/month for a 1 vCPU / 2 GB RAM container.

What platforms does Northflank support?

Northflank is a web-based platform with a CLI for macOS, Windows and Linux, a public REST & GraphQL API, a Terraform provider and a GitHub Action. Workloads run as Linux containers (and microVMs for AI sandboxes).

How does Northflank compare to Railway and Render?

Railway and Render are simpler PaaS products optimised for solo devs and small teams — great DX, no BYOC, no first-class GPUs. Northflank is closer to a developer-friendly Kubernetes platform: more primitives, real BYOC into your AWS/GCP/Azure account, and per-second GPU billing on H100/H200, in exchange for a slightly steeper learning curve.

Does Northflank support GPUs for AI workloads?

Yes. Northflank offers NVIDIA L4 ($0.80/hr), A100 40GB ($1.42/hr), A100 80GB ($1.76/hr), H100 80GB ($2.74/hr) and H200 141GB ($3.14/hr), billed per second, with fractional GPU allocation and autoscaling for inference and fine-tuning workloads.

Is Northflank open source?

No — the Northflank control plane is closed source. However, BYOC means you fully own the cloud account where workloads run, the CLI and Terraform provider are public, and there is no proprietary runtime lock-in (your code is just OCI containers).