Railway is popular for backend developers. Connect a repo, get a database, deploy. But Railway is a US company on US infrastructure. If you’re a Canadian team handling real data, that matters.
The jurisdiction reality
Railway runs on GCP and AWS – US companies subject to US law. Railway itself is based in San Francisco, falling under the CLOUD Act and FISA. You can select a region, but there’s no Canadian option. Even if there were, the company would still be American. Your API requests, database connections, and logs all flow through US systems.
For side projects and internal tools, this doesn’t matter. But if you’re building SaaS that stores client data, healthcare or legal tech, or anything where clients ask “where is our data?” – “US infrastructure, US company” may not work.
The backend data problem
Frontend hosting has an escape hatch: static sites don’t store data. A Next.js marketing page might be fine – just HTML and JavaScript. Backend services don’t have that luxury. Your API endpoints receive user data. Your databases store it. Your logs capture it. With Railway, all of this lives on US infrastructure, stored by a US company. If PIPEDA, provincial health privacy laws, or client contracts require Canadian data residency, Railway can’t provide it.
If you handle personal information under PIPEDA, have data residency requirements in contracts, work in healthcare, legal, or financial services, or want to offer “Canadian data sovereignty” as a feature – US infrastructure is a problem. But you don’t need a compliance requirement to care. If you just don’t want your infrastructure under US law, that’s reason enough.
The Canadian alternative
A Railway equivalent with Canadian jurisdiction needs: managed databases (one-click PostgreSQL, MySQL, Redis), git-based deploys with automatic builds, and the ability to run multiple services with private networking. On infrastructure: servers physically in Canada, and a platform operated from Canada – not a US company with a Canadian data centre.
MapleDeploy offers the same workflow (git push deploys, one-click databases, real-time logs) on fully Canadian infrastructure, operated from Canada. If jurisdiction matters, you have options.