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Fly.io vs Porter

Porter scores higher on the AgentReady, 55/100 against 53/100. They differ on 6 of the 41 signals. Which ones decides whether an agent can adopt them without a person watching.

What each one is

Fly.io. Fly.io provides real hardware-isolated Linux computers (called Sprites and Machines) for agents, evals, and tools, with a pay-as-you-go model where billing goes to zero when not in use.

Porter. Porter is a platform as a service (PaaS) that runs in your own cloud.

Where Fly.io is ahead

Fly.io passes agent compatibility verified, and Porter does not. That is operate, whether an agent can run against it in production and recover when a call fails.

Where Porter is ahead

Porter passes llms-full.txt / full agent docs, and Fly.io does not. That is discover, whether an agent can find the product at all without being told it exists.

It also holds adopt: free trial or free allowance, fast time to first request and copyable quickstart. Fly.io misses those.

And on operate, retry behavior documented. Fly.io misses it.

What neither does

Both fail clear product positioning, structured api reference, openapi / spec quality, authentication documented, request examples provided, response examples provided, errors and status codes documented, limits / constraints documented, no mandatory sales call, agent-compatible signup flow, programmatic credential creation, structured, predictable output, machine-readable errors, idempotency support, rate-limit behavior predictable. If your agent needs any of those, you will be building it yourself either way.

Score, pillar by pillar

The AgentReady splits into four pillars, scored separately, because a product can be easy to find and still impossible to adopt.

Discover. Porter leads 87 to 80. Fly.io misses clear product positioning, llms-full.txt / full agent docs; Porter misses clear product positioning.

Understand. Both sit at 23/100 here. Fly.io misses structured api reference, openapi / spec quality, authentication documented, request examples provided, response examples provided, errors and status codes documented, limits / constraints documented; Porter misses structured api reference, openapi / spec quality, authentication documented, request examples provided, response examples provided, errors and status codes documented, limits / constraints documented.

Adopt is whether an agent can get a key and make its first successful call without a human in the loop. Porter leads 70 to 55. Fly.io misses no mandatory sales call, agent-compatible signup flow, programmatic credential creation, free trial or free allowance, fast time to first request, copyable quickstart; Porter misses no mandatory sales call, agent-compatible signup flow, programmatic credential creation.

Operate. Fly.io leads 53 to 41. Fly.io misses structured, predictable output, machine-readable errors, retry behavior documented, idempotency support, rate-limit behavior predictable; Porter misses structured, predictable output, machine-readable errors, idempotency support, rate-limit behavior predictable, agent compatibility verified.

Pricing

Fly.io starts at $29/mo. Porter starts at $6/mo with no free tier.

Signal by signal

Which to pick

Porter clears more of the signals an agent needs, so it is the safer default for unattended use. Full profiles: Fly.io and Porter. Alternatives to each: Fly.io, Porter.

An agent can fetch this as data: POST /v1/compare {"slugs": ["fly", "porter"]}