Decoding Platform Limits: When Vercel, Netlify, and Railway Force You to VPS

These platforms appear interchangeable until you hit their structural limits—which manifest as surprise bills, inflexible deployments, or missing infrastructure controls. The key insight is that Vercel and Netlify are edge-first platforms optimized for frontend workloads, while Railway operates more like lightweight VPS infrastructure, with fundamentally different pricing and scaling models. Understanding these differences upfront determines whether your next migration is a smooth transition or a costly mistake.