Feature by feature
A straightforward look at how Forte compares to Render.
| Render | Forte | |
|---|---|---|
| Payments | ✗ Build your own Stripe integration | ✓ Built in — subscriptions in one API call |
| User authentication | ✗ Build auth yourself | ✓ Built-in user auth and management |
| Debugging | Logs only | ✓ Trace any request by ID |
| Observability | Metrics dashboards | ✓ Latency percentiles + status-code breakdown |
| Auto-scaling | Automatic, but Pro+ and opt-in | ✓ Automatic, included by default |
| Cold starts | Free services spin down | ✓ Always-on instances |
| Billing | Per-service, usage-based | ✓ Predictable, flat-rate instances |
| Seat & platform fees | Flat plan fee — $25/mo (Pro) to $499/mo (Scale) | ✓ No seat or plan fees — pay only for what you use |
| Network egress | Charged above free tier | ✓ No egress fees — API, web, or content |
| What's included | Compute + database | ✓ Auth, payments, observability, DDoS, networking |
Migrate from Render in 15 minutes
No special tooling. No migration scripts. Just point Forte at your existing repository.
Connect GitHub
Forte reads from the same GitHub repo — no render.yaml required.
Transfer environment variables
Copy your environment variables from Render's dashboard into Forte. They're stored encrypted.
Deploy and let it scale
Forte builds from your Dockerfile, or generates one for you, and deploys on AWS — autoscaling automatically and never spinning down.
Debug by request, not by grep
Use Forte's built-in request debugger — search by request ID, with latency percentiles and status-code breakdowns included.
Turn on what Render couldn't
Flip on built-in user authentication and Stripe-backed payments — the parts you'd otherwise build and operate yourself.