Static Site Hosting in 2026: 6 Hosts Compared by Real Limits
GitHub Pages, Cloudflare Pages, Netlify, Vercel, Surge, GitLab Pages. Six free static hosts compared on the four numbers that actually matter.
Pure static sites , no SSR, no API routes , have the most generous hosting options of any category. Six hosts give them away free. The marketing pages all look similar. The actual numbers are not.
The four numbers that matter
Bandwidth per month. Build frequency cap. Site size cap. Custom domain HTTPS. If a host is missing on any of those, you find out the wrong way.
| Host | Bandwidth | Builds | Site size | Custom HTTPS | |---|---|---|---|---| | GitHub Pages | 100 GB/mo (soft) | 10/hr | 1 GB | Free | | Cloudflare Pages | Unlimited | 500/mo | 25 MB/file | Free | | Netlify | 100 GB/mo | 300 min/mo | None | Free | | Vercel Hobby | 100 GB/mo | 6,000 min/mo | None | Free | | Surge.sh | Unlimited (fair use) | Unmetered | None | $30/mo | | GitLab Pages | Soft fair-use | 400 CI min/mo | None | Free |
Picks by use case
Personal blog or docs site, small audience. GitHub Pages. Free, stable, custom HTTPS, no commercial limit. The 1 GB site size and 10 builds/hour cap is easy to live with. Fork the choppy-toast/* templates if you need a pre-wired Next.js static export.
Project page that might suddenly go viral. Cloudflare Pages. Unlimited bandwidth makes the 500 builds/month cap worth eating. One viral hit on Vercel can blow through 100 GB in an afternoon and trigger overage; Pages charges nothing.
Agency or commercial side project. Netlify Starter. The 300 build minutes is the only meaningful constraint, and forms/identity/split-testing come included. Vercel's commercial-use restriction makes Hobby a non-starter for paid work.
SSR or function-heavy app where static is not enough. Vercel Hobby (personal) or Pro ($20/mo). The 6,000 build minutes and 100 GB-hours of serverless are the most generous in the category. Skip Netlify here unless you have specific reasons.
CLI-first deploy, no git workflow. Surge.sh. Truly minimal, deploy any folder in 5 seconds. The $30/month custom HTTPS is the line that limits scope, but for personal subdomains under a single root, free is fine.
Self-hosted or on-prem requirement. GitLab Pages. Same idea as GitHub Pages, but you can run GitLab itself on your own infrastructure. The 400 CI minutes/month cap is real if you build often.
What no one says
Bandwidth limits are theoretical for 95 percent of indie projects. A 100 GB/month limit means roughly 100,000 page views of a typical 1 MB page. Most projects do not see that traffic. If you are worried about bandwidth, you are over-optimizing.
The build cap is the limit that bites. Sort hosts by build cap, not by bandwidth. Then check the commercial-use clause. Then check the custom HTTPS column. Done.