A Heroku-style deploy without a cloud bill hiding underneath
Porter gives you a Heroku-like flow over Kubernetes running in your own AWS, GCP or Azure account, so the underlying cloud bill (compute, storage and metered egress) is still yours to pay and reason about. Ruust owns the metal for you: one flat price per Egg per month in GBP, unmetered egress on every tier, no Kubernetes to run, and every Egg kept warm around the clock. There is one number, and it is the one you chose.
Flat price per Egg, in GBP · unmetered egress · no cold starts
Porter and Ruust answer very different questions. Porter puts a friendly PaaS in front of infrastructure you own and operate on Kubernetes, whilst Ruust is fully managed hosting where the metal, the maths and the egress are ours to worry about. Here is how they line up on the things that shape your bill and your operational load.
| Ruust | Porter | |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing model | Flat GBP per Egg per month: Nano £3, Small £6, Standard £12, Large £24. One bill. | A platform fee priced in USD on top of your own cloud account's usage bill. |
| Egress | Unmetered on every tier. No egress bill, ever. Fair-use rate caps only. | Runs in your cloud account, so your cloud provider's metered data-transfer charges apply. |
| Who pays for the infrastructure | We own the metal. Your flat per-Egg price is the whole cost of running it. | You do. You bring and pay for the AWS, GCP or Azure account underneath. |
| Kubernetes | None to see or run. You deploy an Egg, we handle scheduling and the host. | Kubernetes under the hood in your account, abstracted but still yours to own. |
| Cold starts | None. Every Egg is kept warm 24/7, no scale-to-zero, no spin-up lag. | Depends on how the underlying cluster and autoscaling are configured. |
| Databases | Managed Postgres and Redis Eggs with a persistent volume, private to your Coop. | Tends to lean on your cloud's managed databases (RDS and similar), billed by that cloud. |
| Data residency and control | Runs on our regional cells (London, Virginia), or your own hosts via BYOH. | Runs entirely inside your own cloud account and VPC, a genuine strength. |
| Own hardware | BYOH: run the open-source Apache-2.0 agent on your Linux boxes, £2/Egg capped £20/host. | The whole model is your own cloud, though that means a cloud account, not bare metal. |
Porter details are as we understand them and can change. Always check Porter's current pricing and features for the latest.
What you get by switching.
One flat GBP bill, with nothing running underneath it
With Porter you pay a platform fee and then whatever your cloud account rings up for compute, storage and transfer. Ruust is a single flat price per Egg per month in GBP, the same in every region, with no cloud bill hiding beneath it. You size the app once and the total stops being a moving target.
Unmetered egress, not your cloud's data-transfer meter
Because Porter runs in your own AWS, GCP or Azure account, your egress is billed by that cloud provider, and provider data transfer is one of the classic surprise line items. On Ruust egress is unmetered on every tier, with no bill and no volume cap. Fair-use rate caps keep abuse out, but a busy month never becomes an egress invoice.
No Kubernetes to own or operate
Porter does a genuinely good job of hiding Kubernetes, but the cluster still lives in your account and remains yours to own, patch and reason about when something goes sideways. Ruust has no Kubernetes for you to see. You deploy an Egg, and scheduling, the host and the platform are ours to run and keep healthy.
Always-on, live in about two minutes
Connect a repo (Nixpacks autobuild or your own Dockerfile), pick a region and size, and you are live on HTTPS in about two minutes, with TLS issued in roughly 90 seconds and renewed automatically. Every Egg is kept warm 24/7 with no scale-to-zero, and managed Postgres and Redis, private networking, health checks and zero-downtime rolling deploys come as standard.
Where Porter is the better fit.
Your cloud, your account, your control
Porter's core promise is real and valuable: your apps run inside your own AWS, GCP or Azure account and VPC, on infrastructure you fully own. If data residency, compliance boundaries, existing cloud commitments or negotiated cloud discounts matter to you, keeping everything in your account is a genuine advantage that fully managed hosting cannot offer.
A friendly path onto real Kubernetes
If you want, or are required to run on Kubernetes but do not want to hand-roll the developer experience, Porter gives you a Heroku-like flow on top of it. That is a smart middle ground for teams standardising on Kubernetes who still want fast, repo-to-deploy ergonomics, and it is something Ruust deliberately does not try to be.
Scales into the full breadth of a hyperscaler
Running in your own cloud means the entire catalogue of that provider is right there: managed databases, object storage, queues, IAM and every region they operate. For teams that expect to grow into a wide slice of AWS, GCP or Azure, that reach and integration is a real strength, and broader than Ruust's smaller set of regional cells today.
Ruust vs Porter, the common questions.
What is the core difference between Ruust and Porter?
Porter runs a Heroku-like platform on Kubernetes inside your own cloud account, so you still own and pay for the AWS, GCP or Azure infrastructure underneath, plus a platform fee in USD. Ruust is fully managed hosting on our own metal: one flat price per Egg per month in GBP, with no separate cloud bill, no Kubernetes to run and unmetered egress on every tier.
With Ruust, do I still get a separate cloud bill like I would with Porter?
No. Ruust owns the infrastructure, so the flat per-Egg price is the whole cost. There is no underlying AWS, GCP or Azure account to fund and no metered cloud data-transfer to reconcile. Egress is unmetered on every tier, so serving heavy traffic never adds an egress charge, whereas running in your own cloud with Porter means that transfer is billed by your provider.
Do I have to understand Kubernetes to use Ruust?
Not at all. There is no Kubernetes for you to run or even see. You connect a git repo, Ruust autobuilds it with Nixpacks or your own Dockerfile, you pick a region and size, and it is live on HTTPS in about two minutes. Scheduling and the host are ours to manage, so you are never on the hook for a cluster.
When is Porter the better choice?
When running inside your own cloud account genuinely matters. If you have data-residency or compliance rules that require your VPC, existing committed cloud spend or discounts to use up, or a mandate to standardise on Kubernetes, Porter's deploy-on-your-own-cloud model is the right fit and Ruust's fully managed approach is not what you need. It is honest to say the two aim at different problems.