Softwr

Cloud · head to head

Fly.io vs Hookdeck

Fly.io logo

Fly.io

Cloud

Deploy web applications globally

From
$29/month
Free plan
No
Full reviewWebsite
Hookdeck logo

Hookdeck

Developer Tools

Event gateway that receives, queues, retries and replays inbound webhooks

From
Free
Free plan
Yes
Full reviewWebsite

The short version

  • Only Hookdeck has a free tier, so it costs nothing to try first.
  • Each has a real cost: Fly.io egress is priced by destination region, from $0.02 per GB in North America and Europe to $0.12 per GB for Africa and India, so the same traffic costs six times more depending on where users are; Hookdeck pricing meters delivered events, so fan-out multiplies the bill: one inbound event routed to four services counts as four deliveries.
  • They diverge on capability: Fly.io covers Global deployment, Hookdeck covers Ingest and persist.
  • Prices and features above were last checked on 31 August 2026.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which Fly.io and Hookdeck actually diverge.

Attributes where Fly.io and Hookdeck differ
AttributeFly.ioHookdeck
Starting price$29/monthFree
Pricing modelusage-basedPer month by delivered event count
Free tierNoYes
PlatformsWeb, Api, DockerWeb, Linux, macOS, Windows
CategoryCloudDeveloper Tools
Founded2020Unknown

Identical on both: user rating (Not yet rated).

What each one covers

Drawn from each product's published feature list. An absence here means we hold no record of it - not that the product lacks it.

Only in Fly.io

  • Global deployment
  • Docker support
  • Postgres databases
  • Redis support
  • Auto-scaling
  • Health checks
  • Backups
  • Monitoring

Only in Hookdeck

  • Ingest and persist
  • Automatic retries
  • Filters and fan-out
  • Transformations
  • Local development CLI
  • Rate limiting

What people use each for

The jobs each tool is most often brought in to do.

Fly.io

  • Deploying containerised applications close to users across regionsnot Hookdeck
  • Running full stack apps and databases on managed machinesnot Hookdeck

Hookdeck

  • A payments integration where losing a Stripe event during a deploy causes an order to go unfulfillednot Fly.io
  • Fanning one provider webhook out to several internal services without each subscribing separatelynot Fly.io
  • Debugging a partner integration by replaying the exact failing payload after shipping a fixnot Fly.io
  • Receiving production-shaped webhooks on a developer laptop without running a public tunnelnot Fly.io

Where each one falls short

Documented limitations, not opinions. Every one is a constraint you would hit in normal use.

Fly.io

  • Egress is priced by destination region, from $0.02 per GB in North America and Europe to $0.12 per GB for Africa and India, so the same traffic costs six times more depending on where users are
  • Stopped machines still bill at $0.15 per GB of root filesystem a month, so a paused service is not a free one
  • Volumes are billed on provisioned capacity rather than usage, at $0.15 per GB a month
  • Reservation discounts of 40% require paying a year up front, from $36 to $1,440
  • Fly Kubernetes is a separate $75 a month per cluster
  • Dedicated IPv4 addresses are $2 a month each

Hookdeck

  • Pricing meters delivered events, so fan-out multiplies the bill: one inbound event routed to four services counts as four deliveries.
  • Free-tier retention is three days, which is shorter than the time it typically takes to notice a failing integration, so the payloads needed for a replay are often already gone.
  • It becomes a single point of failure in front of every third-party integration, and an outage there means every provider webhook queues or fails at once.
  • The transformation layer runs JavaScript in a constrained environment, so anything that needs a database lookup or an external call has to happen downstream instead.
  • For a team already running Kafka or SQS the value is mostly the console and the replay UI, which is a hard cost to justify against infrastructure they already operate.

Pricing, plan by plan

Fly.io

$29/month
  • Pay-as-You-Go$null/mo
    • Micro VMs and persistent storage charged by usage
    • FlyCTL CLI
    • Unlimited users and organizations
  • Serious Support$29/month
    • Access to dedicated engineering team
    • All Pay-as-You-Go features
  • Machine Reservation Blocks$null/mo
    • 40% discount on machine usage
    • Requires upfront payment for savings
  • Compliance Package$99/month
    • HIPAA compliance
    • BAAs
    • SOC2 documentation

Hookdeck

Free
  • DeveloperFree
    • Up to ten thousand events per month
    • Three-day retention
    • One user
  • Team$39/month
    • Ten thousand events included
    • Unlimited users
    • Pay as you go metering above the included events
  • Growth$499/month
    • Ten thousand events included plus metered usage
    • Thirty-day retention
    • Uptime and latency SLAs
  • Enterprise$undefined/year
    • Negotiated event volume
    • Custom retention
    • Dedicated support

Which should you pick?

Choose Fly.io if

  • You need global deployment.
  • You work on Web, Api, Docker.
  • You also want docker support.
Fly.io review

Choose Hookdeck if

  • You need ingest and persist.
  • You want to start without paying.
  • You work on Web, Linux, macOS, Windows.
  • You also want automatic retries.
Hookdeck review

Questions people ask

Is Fly.io or Hookdeck better?
Neither clearly leads. Fly.io starts at $29/month and Hookdeck at Free, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, Fly.io or Hookdeck?
Hookdeck has a free tier; the other does not. Paid plans start at $29/month for Fly.io and Free for Hookdeck.
Does Fly.io or Hookdeck run on more platforms?
Fly.io runs on Web, Api, Docker. Hookdeck runs on Web, Linux, macOS, Windows.
Can I use Hookdeck for free?
Yes. Hookdeck has a free tier, so you can try it without paying. Fly.io starts at $29/month.
What is Fly.io best used for?
Fly.io is most often used for deploying containerised applications close to users across regions, running full stack apps and databases on managed machines. Of those, deploying containerised applications close to users across regions and running full stack apps and databases on managed machines are not what Hookdeck is typically brought in for.
What can Fly.io do that Hookdeck cannot?
Fly.io covers Global deployment, Docker support, Postgres databases, Redis support. Hookdeck covers Ingest and persist, Automatic retries, Filters and fan-out, Transformations.

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

Fly.io: Is there a free tier for Fly.io?

Fly.io does not advertise a free tier. The base plan is pay-as-you-go with usage-based pricing for Micro VMs and persistent storage. All users get FlyCTL CLI, unlimited organizations, private networking, SSO, ACLs, and scoped tokens.

Source
Hookdeck: Is there a free plan?

Yes, ten thousand events a month with three-day retention and one user.

Fly.io: How much does Fly.io Serious Support cost?

Serious Support costs 29 USD per month and provides access to a dedicated engineering team while maintaining all pay-as-you-go features for Micro VMs and storage.

Source
Hookdeck: How is usage counted?

By delivered events, so a single inbound webhook fanned out to three destinations counts as three.

Fly.io: What does Fly.io Compliance Package include?

The Compliance Package is 99 USD per month and includes HIPAA compliance, BAAs, and SOC2 documentation for organizations requiring compliance certifications.

Source
Hookdeck: Can I replay a failed webhook?

Yes, individually or in bulk from the console, with the original payload.

Fly.io: Does Fly.io offer discounts for upfront commitment?

Yes, Fly.io offers Machine Reservation Blocks with 40% discount on machine usage. This requires upfront payment but applies savings on infrastructure costs.

Source
Hookdeck: Does it work for outbound webhooks too?

Yes, the same queueing, retry and observability applies to webhooks you send.

Share

Related pages

More on Fly.io

More on Hookdeck

Keep looking

Other head to heads