Experience the difference.
Fly.io makes edge deployment easy with micro-VMs and a global network, but you're renting their infrastructure with no path to owning yours. See why teams that need infrastructure sovereignty choose Cycle over Fly.
The orchestration trade-off.
Evaluating the balance between power, maintenance, and usability.
Simplicity
Provides an excellent CLI and developer workflow for deploying apps globally, successfully abstracting edge routing and micro-VM provisioning.
Customizability
Configuration files offer solid control over application behavior, but underlying infrastructure topologies remain managed strictly by the platform.
Operational Burden
Low overhead for standard deployments, though debugging internal network meshes or managing stateful volumes across regions can require manual effort.
What's in the box.
The platform is the product here. Integrated, supported, and kept current for you.
| Features & Capabilities | Cycle | Fly.io |
|---|---|---|
Infrastructure & Compute | ||
| Bring Your Own Infrastructure (BYOI) | Yes | No Managed platform |
| Automated OS / Kernel Updates | Yes | Yes |
| Container, VM, & Serverless Support | Yes | Partial Containers + micro-VMs |
Networking & Security | ||
| Zero-Config Encrypted Mesh Network | Yes | Partial Managed internal mesh, not BYOI |
| Automated Let's Encrypt TLS | Yes | Yes Automated Let's Encrypt cert issuance and renewal for custom domains |
| Built-in Dynamic Load Balancing & WAF | Yes | Partial Built-in routing, limited WAF story |
Storage & Telemetry | ||
| Seamless Stateful Volume Migration | Yes | No Volume portability limited |
| Agentless Metrics, Logs & Events | Yes | Partial Built-in platform telemetry |
Developer Experience | ||
| Immutable Configuration (No Drift) | Yes | Partial fly.toml |
| Native Two-Way SSH / Secure Console | Yes | Partial fly ssh console |