Fly Machines vs LinuxServer.io
A detailed comparison to help you choose between Fly Machines and LinuxServer.io.
Quick Verdict
3.9/5
Fly Machines
0 reviews
4.2/5
LinuxServer.io
0 reviews
LinuxServer.io is rated higher (4.2 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. LinuxServer.io maintains a library of curated, consistently built Docker container images — 293 repositories on Docker Hub as of October 2026
Fly Machines Fast-starting VMs for containerised apps at the edge | LinuxServer.io Curated Docker images for self-hosted apps | |
|---|---|---|
| Overview | ||
| Rating | 3.9 (0 reviews) | 4.2 (0 reviews)✓ |
| Pricing model | usage-based | free |
| Starting price | From $2.19/mo | Free✓ |
| 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 | Self-hosters, homelab builders and small teams who want a consistent, well-documented container fleet and are prepared to run the infrastructure themselves. |
| 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 tieropen source |
| Visit Fly Machines → | Visit LinuxServer.io → | |
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
LinuxServer.io
Pros
- + Entirely free and open source — 293 maintained Docker Hub repositories with no premium tier
- + Standardized conventions (shared base images, s6-overlay v3, uniform config layout) across the fleet
- + Automatic rebuilds when upstream apps or dependencies update, with version-linked image tags
- + Documentation for every image at docs.linuxserver.io plus general container guides
- + Long verifiable track record since 2015 with hundreds of millions of pulls
Cons
- - Not a hosting service — you run, patch, back up and secure the infrastructure yourself
- - Community-only support on a "reasonable endeavours" basis: no SLA, no paid escalation
- - Breaking changes between base image versions and deliberately no `latest` tag on base images
- - No vendor accountability or compliance paperwork behind the supply chain
- - Images only — no orchestration, backup or managed-update layer
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