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Free hosting for developers in 2026: what's actually free

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Every "free hosting" article recommends the same 3 options and doesn't tell you where the free tier stops working. This guide is honest about what each free tier actually gives you, what usage will bite the free ceiling first, and when you should stop cheaping out and pay $4.60 for a Hetzner.

The short answer

  • Static site (blog, portfolio, React SPA): Cloudflare Pages, free.
  • Static site with a lot of build minutes: GitHub Pages, free.
  • Next.js personal project: Vercel Hobby, free.
  • Docker containers, low usage: Fly.io free tier.
  • Small always-on servers: Oracle Cloud Free Tier.
  • API-only workloads with unpredictable traffic: Cloudflare Workers, free.

Free static site hosting

Cloudflare Pages

Free tier: Unlimited requests. 500 builds per month. Global CDN included. Custom domain supported. HTTPS free.

Catch: Build minutes cap. Complex Next.js or Astro sites can hit 500 builds/month faster than you'd think.

Best for: any static site (React SPA, Vue, Astro, Next.js static export, Hugo, Eleventy).

GitHub Pages

Free tier: Custom domain, HTTPS. Bandwidth "generous" (100 GB/mo per site claimed).

Catch: Public repos only for free. Slower builds than Cloudflare or Netlify.

Best for: Jekyll blogs, documentation sites, personal project pages.

Netlify

Free tier: 100 GB bandwidth/month. 300 build minutes/month. Custom domain. HTTPS.

Catch: Build minute cap can bite; large sites rebuild often.

Best for: Any static site, especially with client-side JavaScript that benefits from Netlify's edge functions.

Vercel Hobby

Free tier: For personal, non-commercial use. 100 GB bandwidth. 100k function invocations. 100 GB-hours function execution.

Catch: Non-commercial only. If your side project takes off and starts making money, you're supposed to move to Pro ($20/mo/user).

Best for: Next.js side projects.

Free dynamic hosting

Fly.io free tier

Free tier: 3 shared-CPU 256 MB VMs. 3 GB persistent storage. 160 GB egress/month.

Catch: 256 MB RAM is tight for many workloads. Persistent volumes over 3 GB cost money.

Best for: Small always-on Docker-based apps.

Oracle Cloud Free Tier

Free tier: 4 ARM64 instances totalling 24 GB RAM. 200 GB storage. 10 TB outbound transfer/month.

Catch: Frequently out of stock in popular regions. Oracle Cloud UX is not developer-friendly. Account creation requires credit card verification and sometimes stalls.

Best for: Real always-on hobby projects and self-hosted apps if you can get an instance.

Cloudflare Workers

Free tier: 100,000 requests/day. 10ms CPU time per request. Global edge deployment.

Catch: Not a general-purpose VPS. Serverless model — you rewrite your app for the Workers runtime. TypeScript/JavaScript only.

Best for: API endpoints, edge middleware, small serverless apps.

Deno Deploy free tier

Free tier: 100,000 requests/day. Similar shape to Cloudflare Workers.

Best for: Deno/TypeScript applications.

Google Cloud Free Tier

Free tier: 1 e2-micro instance in specific US regions. 30 GB storage. 1 GB egress/month.

Catch: Limited regions. 1 GB egress is tight. GCP billing UX is confusing; easy to accidentally overrun.

Best for: Learning GCP, not real workloads.

AWS Free Tier

Free tier: 12 months of t2.micro EC2 (750 hours/month). 30 GB storage. 15 GB egress/month.

Catch: After 12 months, you're on paid rates. Data transfer overage is priced painfully.

Best for: Learning AWS, not real workloads.

Free database options

  • Supabase free tier: 500 MB database. Real Postgres. Auth included.
  • PlanetScale free tier: 5 GB storage, 1 billion row reads/month. MySQL-compatible.
  • Neon free tier: 512 MB storage. Real Postgres with branching.
  • Turso free tier: 500 databases, 9 GB storage. libSQL/SQLite at edge.
  • Xata free tier: 15 GB storage. Postgres + search + file storage.
  • MongoDB Atlas free tier: 512 MB shared cluster.

For most side projects, these are legitimately enough. For real production, expect to pay $10-30/mo.

The "free but not really" trap

Heroku's free dyno was retired in November 2022. Every "use Heroku for free" tutorial from 2020-2022 no longer works.

Firebase Spark plan is free-ish but Firestore reads/writes over the free quota bill you unexpectedly. Set up billing alerts.

Railway removed its free plan in July 2023; you get $5 of free credit per month on the paid plan.

Render's free web service tier spins down after 15 minutes of inactivity. Real cold-start problem for public-facing sites.

When free stops working

You hit the bandwidth cap. Vercel at 100 GB, Fly.io at 160 GB, Netlify at 100 GB — a viral post can burn the whole month's allowance in a day. Overage rates are high.

You need persistent storage over the free limit. Fly.io's 3 GB gets used up fast. Oracle's 200 GB is generous but the instance itself may be unavailable.

Cold starts hurt. Free-tier serverless has cold starts. If your users notice, you need paid.

You want business use. Vercel Hobby, Cloudflare Pages personal use — some tiers explicitly ban commercial usage.

The honest recommendation

  • Personal blog, portfolio, static site: Cloudflare Pages free tier. Legitimate.
  • Personal Next.js side project: Vercel Hobby free tier.
  • Discord bot, small always-on service: Fly.io free tier or Oracle Cloud Free Tier.
  • Anything commercial or with real traffic: stop using free tier, buy a $4.60 Hetzner CX22. See our cheapest way to host a website guide.

The $4.60/mo Hetzner is genuinely more capable than most free tiers. You buy 4 GB of RAM, 20 TB bandwidth, root access, and zero usage-based surprises. If your side project is worth $5/mo of hosting, it's worth $5/mo of hosting.

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