A flat, always-on home for apps that outgrew the Jamstack meter
Netlify is built for static sites and functions, with bandwidth and build minutes metered against an allowance. Ruust runs your git repo as an always-on Egg for one flat price per month in GBP, with unmetered egress on every tier. No cold starts, no overage maths, no surprise bandwidth bill.
Flat price per Egg, in GBP · unmetered egress · no cold starts
Both let you ship from a git push, but they aim at different things. Netlify is a Jamstack platform for static hosting and serverless or edge functions, usually billed by usage. Ruust is flat-priced container hosting for many small, long-running apps. Here is how they line up.
| Ruust | Netlify | |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing model | Flat GBP per Egg per month. Nano £3, Small £6, Standard £12, Large £24. | Usage based: tends to meter bandwidth and build minutes with overage beyond an allowance. |
| Egress | Unmetered on every tier. No egress bill, ever (fair-use rate caps only). | Bandwidth is usually metered, with charges once you pass the included allowance. |
| Currency | Priced in GBP, same price in every region. | Typically priced in USD. |
| Always-on | Every Egg kept warm 24/7. No cold starts, no scale-to-zero, no spin-up lag. | Functions are serverless and free-tier sites can spin down after inactivity. |
| Long-running backends | Built for it: persistent containers, replicas, health checks, rolling deploys. | Aimed at static front ends and short-lived functions, not always-on servers. |
| Databases | Bundled managed Postgres and Redis Eggs with a persistent volume, private to your Coop. | No first-party bundled database; you bring your own or add-ons. |
| Build minutes | No build-minute meter. Nixpacks autobuild or your own Dockerfile. | Build minutes are usually metered with overage past the included quota. |
| Edge and CDN | Regional cells (London, Virginia). No global edge function network. | Strong global CDN and edge functions, a core strength for static delivery. |
Netlify details are as we understand them and can change. Always check Netlify's current pricing and features for the latest.
What you get by switching.
One flat bill, not a usage meter
Netlify tends to price by usage, so a busy month can mean overage on bandwidth or build minutes. Ruust charges a flat GBP price per Egg per month, from £3 for a Nano up to £24 for a Large, with the same price in every region. You know the number before the traffic arrives.
Unmetered egress is the headline
Usage-based pricing is a tax on being always-on, and egress is where it bites hardest. On Ruust egress is unmetered on every tier, with no bill and no volume cap (just fair-use rate limits to stop abuse). A launch, a spike or a busy API costs you nothing extra.
Always-on, so no cold starts
Every Egg is kept warm around the clock. There is no scale-to-zero, no spin-up lag and no first-request penalty. That suits long-running backends, APIs and apps that need to answer instantly, which sit awkwardly on a functions-first platform.
Batteries for real apps
Ruust bundles managed Postgres and Redis database Eggs with persistent volumes, private networking inside a Coop, custom domains with automatic TLS, replicas and zero-downtime rolling deploys. You connect a repo, pick a region and size, and are live on HTTPS in about two minutes.
Where Netlify is the better fit.
The best home for static and Jamstack front ends
If you are shipping a static site or a Jamstack front end, Netlify is genuinely excellent. Its global CDN, instant cache invalidation and mature build pipeline are hard to beat, and Ruust does not try to replicate that edge delivery network.
A rich edge and serverless ecosystem
Netlify's edge functions, deploy previews, form handling and large plugin ecosystem are polished and well documented. For front-end teams who live in that workflow, it tends to be a smoother fit than a container platform.
Generous free tier for small projects
For hobby sites and early prototypes, Netlify's free tier and one-click integrations get you online with almost no setup. If your project is mostly static and low traffic, that convenience is a real advantage.
Ruust vs Netlify, the common questions.
Is Ruust a drop-in replacement for Netlify?
Not exactly, they target different jobs. Netlify shines at static and Jamstack front ends with edge functions. Ruust runs your repo as an always-on container Egg, which suits long-running backends, APIs and full-stack apps that want a flat bill and unmetered egress.
How does Ruust avoid the surprise egress bills Netlify can bring?
Egress on Ruust is unmetered on every tier, so there is no per-gigabyte charge and no volume cap. A traffic spike does not change your bill. Per-Egg fair-use rate caps exist to stop abuse, but they never meter your egress volume.
What does Ruust cost compared with Netlify's usage pricing?
Ruust is flat GBP per Egg per month: Nano £3, Small £6, Standard £12 (most popular) and Large £24, or a custom slider at £12 per vCPU plus £6 per GB. Netlify tends to bill by usage, so your Ruust cost is predictable regardless of how much traffic you serve.
Can I run a database on Ruust like on Netlify?
Yes, and more directly. Ruust offers managed Postgres and Redis database Eggs with a persistent volume, private to your project's Coop, and you can also connect any external Postgres or MySQL by connection string. Netlify has no first-party bundled database.