Fly Machines vs GitHub Container Registry
A detailed comparison to help you choose between Fly Machines and GitHub Container Registry.
Quick Verdict
3.9/5
Fly Machines
0 reviews
4.1/5
GitHub Container Registry
0 reviews
GitHub Container Registry is rated higher (4.1 vs 3.9). Fly Machines are Fly.io's fast-starting virtual machines for containerised workloads. Start in 300ms, stop when idle to save costs. Used for auto-scaling web services and ephemeral compute. GitHub Container Registry (ghcr.io) stores Docker images alongside your GitHub repositories. Free for public images, included in GitHub plans for private. Integrates with GitHub Actions for CI/CD.
Fly Machines Fast-starting VMs for containerised apps at the edge | GitHub Container Registry Container registry integrated with GitHub Actions | |
|---|---|---|
| Overview | ||
| Rating | 3.9 (0 reviews) | 4.1 (0 reviews)✓ |
| Pricing model | usage-based | freemium |
| Starting price | From $2.19/mo | Free tier available✓ |
| Best for | Developers who want fast-starting containers that scale to zero between requests at the edge, and teams building custom control planes on a VM-per-container API | Open-source maintainers distributing public images and GitHub-centric teams that want container images, code, CI, and permissions under one account. |
| Features | ||
| IPv6 | ✓ | |
| DDoS protection | ||
| Automated backups | ||
| Snapshots | ||
| Managed option | ||
| Bare metal | ||
| GPU available | ||
| S3-compatible | ||
| Hourly billing | ✓ | |
| Free tier | ||
| Data-center locations | ||
| Regions | Netherlands, Sweden, France, Germany, UK, US, Canada, Brazil, South Africa, Japan, Singapore, Australia | — |
| Tags | ||
| Tags | free tiermanaged optioneu datacenterus datacenterapac datacenter | free tierapi access |
| Visit Fly Machines → | Visit GitHub Container Registry → | |
Fly Machines
Pros
- + ~300ms VM boot with automatic stop when idle — real scale-to-zero economics for request-driven workloads
- + Billed by the second with a fully published rate card; smallest Machine $2.19/30 days running
- + Low-level lifecycle control via REST API: create, start, stop, clone, update, destroy per VM
- + 17 regions on Fly's own hardware with per-Machine region placement
- + Fast restart from stopped state — assembled rootfs stays on the worker host
Cons
- - Fly.io-only API and infrastructure — no orchestration portability
- - Running the raw API means building your own scaling, placement retry and health logic
- - Always-on and idle costs accumulate: stopped rootfs $0.15/GB/month, volumes $0.15/GB/month, dedicated IPv4 $2/month
- - Capacity limits per region and host can make Machine placement fail
- - No free tier — only a 2-VM-hour/7-day trial — and no uptime SLA outside Enterprise plans
GitHub Container Registry
Pros
- + Free storage and bandwidth for public images with anonymous pulls — strongest OSS distribution offer
- + Images live with the code: one account, one permission model, GITHUB_TOKEN in Actions
- + OCI-compliant (Docker V2 manifests, foreign layers), internal visibility and fine-grained package permissions
- + Container image storage currently free even for private images, with a one-month notice policy before changes
- + Spending limits available to cap overage; metered billing beyond plan quotas
Cons
- - Private plan quotas are small (500 MB on Free) and shared with GitHub Actions artifacts
- - Free private container storage is a policy, not a contract — changeable with one month's notice
- - No published SLA or regional placement for ghcr.io
- - Retention and promotion tooling lag purpose-built registries like Harbor or Artifactory
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