Free Tier Cloud Hosting Comparison 2026

It depends on the binding constraint for your project. Cloudflare Pages wins on bandwidth (unlimited) but caps you at 500 builds/month. Vercel Hobby wins on build minutes (6,000/month) but bans commercial use. Netlify Starter is the only one that allows commercial use with a balanced free tier (100 GB bandwidth, 300 build minutes). For containers, Render free tier still exists with a 15-min spin-down; Koyeb is the only host with a free always-on web service.

Yes. Vercel's terms of service for Hobby tier explicitly forbid commercial use, including ads, paid features, affiliate links, and agency client work. Plenty of indie hackers run small revenue sites on Hobby for years without intervention, but the policy is enforced , Vercel has flagged sites earning AdSense revenue and required upgrades to Pro at $20/month.

The 500 builds per month cap. If you only deploy a single site occasionally, this is invisible. If you run preview deploys on every PR or maintain many small sites under one account, you hit the cap fast. Workarounds include building locally and deploying via the Direct Upload API, disabling preview deploys for branches you don't review, and limiting which branches trigger builds.

Yes, in October 2024. Fly switched from a true free Hobby plan to a Pay-as-you-go model with a $5 monthly usage credit. To use Fly at all you now need a credit card on file. The credit covers a small VM running 24/7 plus light bandwidth, which approximates the old free tier in practice but is no longer technically free.

Koyeb is the only host with a free always-on web service tier , Render's free tier spins down after 15 minutes idle and takes 30+ seconds to wake. If your project gets occasional visitors and the cold start would hurt UX, Koyeb wins. If your project is internal-only or batched, Render's larger ecosystem and better CLI make it the easier pick.

AWS Amplify is fine for projects already in the AWS ecosystem; the free tier drops from 15 GB to 5 GB bandwidth after 12 months. Firebase Hosting bundles cleanly with Firestore and Auth but only gives 10 GB/month. GitHub Pages is the most stable static host (since 2008) with 100 GB/month soft bandwidth and a 1 GB site cap , perfect for docs and personal blogs, useless for SSR or functions.

Vercel and Netlify let you set hard usage caps in the dashboard , turn them on. Cloudflare Pages does not bill at all on the free tier (the cap is enforced by 429 responses, not by overage charges). Fly and Railway are pay-as-you-go and can run up bills if you misconfigure auto-scaling. Always check the billing dashboard before launching anything that might go viral.

Absolutely, and many indie projects do. A common stack: Cloudflare Pages for the frontend (unlimited bandwidth), Supabase for Postgres + Auth, Cloudflare Workers for API logic, Cloudflare R2 for media (zero egress). Total cost: $0 until you hit Supabase's 5 GB egress or 500 MB DB limit. The free tiers are designed to combine well because each host wants you in their ecosystem.

Build minutes count actual CPU time consumed by your build pipeline per month. A typical Next.js app with image optimization takes 2-6 minutes per build. With 300 monthly minutes (Netlify Starter) and 4-minute builds, you get 75 deploys per month total. PR previews multiply this fast: open a PR, push 3 fixes, merge , that is 4 builds for one feature. Vercel's 6,000-minute cap effectively eliminates this concern.

GitHub Pages if you want stable, set-and-forget hosting for a personal blog. Cloudflare Pages if you might serve images at scale and want unlimited bandwidth. Netlify Starter if your blog is part of a commercial site. All three give free HTTPS via Let's Encrypt and custom domains. Pure static blogs do not need Vercel , its strengths (SSR, functions) go unused for content sites.

Sometimes. Heroku ended its free dyno in November 2022. Fly ended free in October 2024. Both gave 6-12 months notice but caused real disruption. Hosts that have been stable on free tiers for years (GitHub Pages since 2008, Cloudflare since 2020, Netlify since 2014) are likelier to stay stable. Newer pay-to-play models (Railway, post-2024 Fly) have predictable economics; expect them to honor terms but raise floors.

Only if your traffic keeps the project active. Supabase pauses free projects after 7 days of inactivity, returning 503 to all requests. For low-traffic SaaS or internal tools that get hit weekly, you need a daily cron ping (free via GitHub Actions) or a $25 Pro upgrade. The 5 GB egress also bites if you serve any media , route those through Cloudflare R2 instead.

Supabase free for Postgres + Auth + 5 GB egress. Cloudflare Pages free for the frontend + Workers + R2 for media. Cloudflare Registrar at $9/year for the domain. Total: $0/month plus $0.81/month spread on the domain. Add a $5 Hetzner VPS if you need an always-on worker for webhooks or cron. Real production stack under $6/month.

When losing the project would hurt , losing data, losing customers, losing reputation. Free tiers don't promise SLAs. Once your project earns money or has paying users, $20/month for Vercel Pro or $25 for Supabase Pro is cheap insurance. The trap is staying on free tier until you hit the wall mid-launch and have to migrate under pressure.

We update it manually when hosts change pricing or limits. Last reviewed May 2026. Pricing pages move and silent changes happen , if a number here looks wrong, check the host's docs and email [email protected] so we can fix it.