Last updated: January 12, 2026
An honest security analysis of Railway for developers considering it for their projects.
Railway is safe for production with automatic HTTPS, container isolation, and Private Networking for internal communication. Unlike Vercel (static/serverless), Railway runs full containers with persistent databases. Main concern: database connection strings must use Railway Variables, not hardcoded values.
Railway strikes a balance between Vercel's simplicity and full container control. Private Networking is the key security feature - enable it to keep database traffic internal. Perfect for apps that need databases and background jobs without managing Kubernetes.
Understanding Railway security in the context of broader industry trends and research.
of Lovable applications (170 out of 1,645) had exposed user data in the CVE-2025-48757 incident
Source: CVE-2025-48757 security advisory
average cost of a data breach in 2023
Source: IBM Cost of a Data Breach Report 2023
developers using vibe coding platforms like Lovable, Bolt, and Replit
Source: Combined platform statistics 2024-2025
“Vibe coding your way to a production codebase is clearly risky. Most of the work we do as software engineers involves evolving existing systems, where the quality and understandability of the underlying code is crucial.”
“The problem with AI-generated code isn't that it doesn't work - it's that it works just well enough to ship, but contains subtle security flaws that are hard to spot.”
Yes. Railway's managed Postgres and Redis include encryption at rest and automated backups. Enable Private Networking to keep database traffic off the public internet. Connection strings should always be stored in Railway Variables, not code.
Private Networking creates internal DNS names (service.railway.internal) for service-to-service communication. Database traffic stays off the public internet. Enable it in service settings - it's free and significantly improves security.
Railway runs persistent containers with databases; Vercel is serverless/static. Railway uses Private Networking; Vercel uses Edge Functions. Railway exposes full container control; Vercel abstracts infrastructure. Railway is better for stateful apps needing databases.
Railway Variables are injected at runtime - they're not stored in your repo or container image. Reference them using ${{variable}} syntax or standard environment variables. Variables can be shared across services or scoped to specific environments.
Don't guess - scan your app and know for certain. VAS checks for all the common security issues in Railway applications.