Short answer: Cloudflare Pages sets its free limits in builds, custom domains and file sizes rather than bandwidth, while Firebase Hosting takes a site offline once it passes 10 GB of transfer in a month unless the account upgrades. Netlify runs its free plan on 300 credits a month, Vercel's Hobby plan and GitHub Pages restrict commercial use, and Render pauses a free web service when traffic stops. Railway's free tier is a 30-day trial that then costs $1 a month.
Eight free plans compared in each vendor's own unit: the limits, what ends the free tier and the first paid price
Free hosting sounds like one product and works like eight. Netlify meters its free plan in credits, Vercel's Hobby plan is for personal projects, Render pauses a free web service when traffic stops, and Firebase Hosting stops serving a site once its free transfer runs out. Each limit below uses the vendor's own unit, so the one that binds first is easy to spot.
Toolradar data: Toolradar tracks 14 web hosting tools, and the limits on free plans differ in kind, not only in size.
Methodology: eight free plans compared on the limits and first paid price each vendor publishes, linked in the footnote and dated October 25, 2026. Paid placement plays no part in the order. Monthly prices are per month and yearly billing is labelled. Arithmetic on printed rates is marked as ours, and paid placement plays no part in the order. The web hosting category and the free hosting platforms guide cover the wider field.
Top Picks
Picked by editorial review, informed by G2 and Capterra review volume and rating and by media mentions, the signals behind our category rankings. How we rate
Static sites on a free plan that meters builds, domains and file sizes rather than bandwidth.
Starting price
From $20 /mo
2.9 (2,050 reviews)
Best for
Developers and small businesses publishing a static or front-end site that may add Functions later.
Git-connected hosting whose free plan draws deploys, bandwidth and compute from one monthly credit pool.
Starting price
From $9 /mo
4.0 (221 reviews)
Best for
Small teams that deploy often, want previews and forms in one dashboard, and will watch the credit meter.
A free Hobby plan for personal projects, with 1 million CDN requests and 100 GB of transfer a month.
Starting price
From $20 /mo
3.6 (208 reviews)
Best for
Personal projects, portfolios and Next.js experiments. A business site belongs on Pro.
| Tool | Starting price | Rating | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cloudflare Pages | From $20/mo | 2.9 2,050 reviews | Developers and small businesses publishing a static or front-end site that may add Functions later. |
| Netlify | From $9/mo | 4.0 221 reviews | Small teams that deploy often, want previews and forms in one dashboard, and will watch the credit meter. |
| Vercel | From $20/mo | 3.6 208 reviews | Personal projects, portfolios and Next.js experiments. A business site belongs on Pro. |
| GitHub Pages | Free plan | n/a | Open source projects, documentation and personal sites that do not sell anything. |
| Firebase Hosting | Free plan | 4.6 950 reviews | Static and single-page sites that may later use other Firebase services and can live with a monthly cap. |
| Render | From $25/mo | 4.6 87 reviews | Prototypes, hobby backends and static sites where a slow first request is acceptable. |
| Deno Deploy | From $20/mo | 3.6 115 reviews | Small APIs and personal apps that stay under the request, egress and CPU caps. |
| Railway | From $5/mo | 3.4 56 reviews | Trying an app for a month before paying, with usage billed above the plan's credits. |
Cloudflare Pages
Static sites on a free plan that meters builds, domains and file sizes rather than bandwidth.
- 1.4 on Trustpilot (1,292 reviews)
- 4.5 on G2 (758 reviews)
- Starting price
- From $20/mo
- Free plan
- Yes
- Rating
- 2.9 (2,050 reviews)
Best for: Developers and small businesses publishing a static or front-end site that may add Functions later.
- Pro: 500 builds a month and 100 custom domains per project on the free plan
- Pro: 20,000 files per site and 25 MiB per asset on the Free plan
- Pro: Pages Functions count against the Workers quota, so that quota is the backend limit
- Con: The free plan runs one build at a time, so a busy repository waits its turn
- Con: Once Functions pass the free Workers quota, the account needs the Workers Paid plan at a $5 a month minimum
Cloudflare Pages offers an incredibly generous Free tier with unlimited bandwidth, making it highly attractive for hobbyists and small projects.
Netlify
Git-connected hosting whose free plan draws deploys, bandwidth and compute from one monthly credit pool.
- 4.6 on Capterra (90 reviews)
- 4.5 on G2 (83 reviews)
- 2.6 on Trustpilot (48 reviews)
- Starting price
- From $9/mo
- Free plan
- Yes
- Rating
- 4.0 (221 reviews)
Best for: Small teams that deploy often, want previews and forms in one dashboard, and will watch the credit meter.
- Pro: Unlimited deploy previews and branch deploys on the free plan
- Pro: Custom domains with SSL and a global CDN on the free plan
- Pro: 300 credits cover about 20 production deploys at 15 credits each, our arithmetic
- Con: Deploys, bandwidth, compute and web requests all draw from one monthly pool
- Con: One concurrent build on the free plan, so a second commit waits for the first
Netlify pioneered JAMstack hosting and remains one of the best platforms for static sites and serverless web apps.
Watch out
Credit system opacity: Free gets 300, Personal 1,000 and Pro 3,000 credits/mo. A deploy costs 15 credits, 1 GB bandwidth 20 credits, 1 GB-hr of compute 10 credits, 10k web requests 2 credits. Predicting monthly spend requires tracking credit consumption across all dimensions
Vercel
A free Hobby plan for personal projects, with 1 million CDN requests and 100 GB of transfer a month.
- 4.7 on G2 (84 reviews)
- 1.7 on Trustpilot (76 reviews)
- 4.4 on Capterra (48 reviews)
- Starting price
- From $20/mo
- Free plan
- Yes
- Rating
- 3.6 (208 reviews)
Best for: Personal projects, portfolios and Next.js experiments. A business site belongs on Pro.
- Pro: 100 GB of fast data transfer, 1 million CDN requests and 1 million function invocations a month on Hobby
- Pro: Automatic CI/CD, a global CDN and Fluid compute on the free tier
- Pro: DDoS mitigation and a web application firewall included on Hobby
- Con: Vercel's Hobby documentation limits the plan to non-commercial, personal use
- Con: The commercial step is Pro, which adds team collaboration and advanced spend controls
Pro at $20/user/mo includes usage credits and 1M CDN requests plus 1 TB of Fast Data Transfer.
Watch out
DDoS and traffic spikes: Vercel bills for all traffic including bot and DDoS traffic. A traffic spike from a HN front page or DDoS attack can push you into a higher Flat Rate CDN tier
GitHub Pages
Free static hosting for public repositories, with a 1 GB site limit and a soft monthly bandwidth limit.
- Starting price
- Free plan
- Free plan
- Yes
Best for: Open source projects, documentation and personal sites that do not sell anything.
- Pro: No plan fee on public repositories
- Pro: Publishes from the repository you already use, with custom domains and HTTPS
- Pro: The soft limit of 10 builds an hour does not apply when a custom GitHub Actions workflow publishes the site
- Con: GitHub's limits page says Pages is not for online businesses, e-commerce or SaaS
- Con: Private repositories need a paid GitHub plan, and each account gets one user or organization site
GitHub Pages offers an incredibly generous pricing model, as it is entirely free.
Firebase Hosting
Static and single-page sites on a global CDN, with a no-cost storage allowance and a monthly transfer cap.
- Starting price
- Free plan
- Free plan
- Yes
- Rating
- 4.6 (950 reviews)
Best for: Static and single-page sites that may later use other Firebase services and can live with a monthly cap.
- Pro: Files up to 2 GB each, and a global CDN on every Hosting site
- Pro: Blaze, pay as you go, bills $0.15 per GB of transfer above the free allowance
- Pro: Upgrading to Blaze brings a site back online past the cap
- Con: Without Blaze, the site is disabled after a short grace period once transfer reaches the monthly cap, until the next month
- Con: Pay-as-you-go billing starts only after the account upgrades to Blaze
Firebase Hosting offers a very generous free Spark plan with 10 GB storage and 360 MB/day transfer, making it highly accessible.
- Starting price
- From $25/mo
- Free plan
- Yes
- Rating
- 4.6 (87 reviews)
Best for: Prototypes, hobby backends and static sites where a slow first request is acceptable.
- Pro: Static sites deploy free and count against the workspace's bandwidth and build minutes
- Pro: A free web service gets 512 MB of RAM and 750 instance hours per workspace each month
- Pro: Free web services support many of the features paid services have, according to Render's docs
- Con: A free web service sleeps, so the next visitor waits for it to start
- Con: Free Postgres databases expire 30 days after creation
Enterprise is custom.
Watch out
Compute costs for web services, Postgres, Redis are billed on top of every plan.
Deno Deploy
Serverless JavaScript and TypeScript apps with 1 million requests and 20 GiB of egress a month on the free plan.
- 4.7 on G2 (74 reviews)
- 2.4 on Trustpilot (41 reviews)
- Starting price
- From $20/mo
- Free plan
- Yes
- Rating
- 3.6 (115 reviews)
Best for: Small APIs and personal apps that stay under the request, egress and CPU caps.
- Pro: 5 custom domains and 150 GiB-hours of memory time a month on the free plan
- Pro: Idle apps shut down after about 20 to 30 seconds, so memory is not billed while they sleep
- Pro: 10 active CPU hours a month on Free, raised to 50 on Pro
- Con: The free plan is listed for personal use and smaller projects
- Con: Pro adds 5 million requests a month, then $2 per million beyond that
Deno Deploy's pricing is quite generous, especially with its robust free tier offering 1M requests and 15 hours CPU.
Watch out
Request overages at $2/million
Railway
A 30-day trial with credits, then $1 a month, with up to 1 vCPU and 0.5 GB of RAM per service on the free plan.
- 4.7 on G2 (38 reviews)
- 1.8 on Trustpilot (18 reviews)
- Starting price
- From $5/mo
- Free plan
- Yes
- Rating
- 3.4 (56 reviews)
Best for: Trying an app for a month before paying, with usage billed above the plan's credits.
- Pro: Billed by the second for memory and CPU, according to Railway's pricing page
- Pro: Hobby includes monthly usage credits and allows up to 48 vCPU and 48 GB RAM per service
- Pro: Global regions on the Hobby plan
- Con: The free plan is a trial first, so it stops being free after 30 days
- Con: Hobby starts with a minimum monthly usage charge for one developer workspace
The included credits in the Hobby and Pro plans effectively reduce the out-of-pocket cost for many users.
Watch out
Overage fees for exceeding included credits
What a free hosting plan actually gives you
A free hosting plan gives you a place to publish files, plus a set of meters that decide when the free part ends. The meters differ. Some vendors count credits that each deploy, build and gigabyte consumes. Others count gigabytes of transfer, build minutes, requests or instance hours. A site can run free for months on one meter and go offline on another, so the useful question is which meter your site reaches first. Cloudflare Pages and Deno Deploy show two different meters side by side.
The limit that ends a free plan is rarely the storage number
The headline number on a free plan is usually storage, and storage is rarely what ends the free tier. Transfer, deploys, build credits and idle time are. Firebase Hosting's no-cost plan includes 10 GB of storage and a monthly transfer cap of the same size. Once transfer passes the cap, the site is disabled until the next month unless the account moves to Blaze, which bills $0.15 per extra GB. A Hacker News commenter put it plainly in February 2024: "you get free quota, and if it's up, it's up". For a steady site that is a fair description of the cap, and for a launch that gets shared widely it is a real risk.
Netlify's meter has moved too. An archived copy of its pricing page from September 6, 2025 lists 5,000 monthly credits on the Pro plan. A copy from October 4, 2025 lists 3,000 for the same tier. The compute rate in the October copy is 5 credits per GB-hour, and the current page sets it at 10. The free plan's 300 credits appear in the archived copies of September 6 and October 4, 2025, and on the current page.
Render's free web service spins down when inbound traffic stops, so the first visitor after a quiet spell waits for it to wake. That is fine for a demo and a poor fit for a checkout page.
Key Features to Look For
Transfer cap (Essential)
Firebase Hosting allows 10 GB of transfer a month on the no-cost plan, Vercel's Hobby plan 100 GB of fast data transfer, and GitHub Pages a soft monthly bandwidth limit. Multiply your page weight by monthly visits to see which cap you will hit first.
Sleep or idle rule (Essential)
Render's free web service spins down after 15 minutes without inbound traffic and gets 750 instance hours a month per workspace. Deno Deploy apps shut down after about 20 to 30 seconds idle, so memory is not billed while they sleep.
Commercial use (Essential)
Vercel's Hobby plan is for personal, non-commercial use only. GitHub's limits page says Pages is not intended for online businesses, e-commerce sites or SaaS.
Build and deploy allowance (Important)
Cloudflare Pages allows 500 builds a month and one build at a time on Free. Netlify's free plan has one concurrent build and charges 15 credits per production deploy.
Custom domains (Important)
Cloudflare Pages allows 100 custom domains per project on Free, Deno Deploy 5 on its free plan, and Netlify includes custom domains with SSL. Check the count if you run several sites.
File size (Nice to have)
Cloudflare Pages caps each asset at 25 MiB and each site at 20,000 files. Firebase Hosting caps each file at 2 GB, and GitHub Pages caps a published site at 1 GB.
First paid step (Important)
Netlify Personal is $9 a month, Render's paid web service with 512 MB of RAM is $7 a month, and Firebase's Blaze plan bills pay as you go above the free allowance.
Before you pick a free plan
-
Find the meter that ends the free plan for your traffic: transfer for a content site, credits for a team that deploys daily, requests for an API.
-
Check the use rule before you build. Vercel's Hobby plan is for personal projects, and GitHub Pages does not allow online businesses.
-
Decide whether a slow first response is acceptable, since a free Render web service sleeps when traffic stops.
-
Count monthly deploys. Netlify charges credits for each production deploy, which adds up on a site that rebuilds on every commit.
-
Plan the upgrade before the cap arrives. Firebase Hosting sites go offline at the cap unless the account is on Blaze.
Evaluation Checklist
Which meter ends the free plan first for your traffic and deploy count
Whether the use is personal, non-commercial or commercial
Whether a slow first response after idle time is acceptable
What the next tier costs in the vendor's own unit
Pricing Overview
Free static plans
Static sites and documentation with a steady traffic level and a meter you can watch.
$0
Free app plans with limits
Prototypes, side projects and small APIs where a slow first response or a monthly cap is acceptable.
$0 with sleep or cap rules
First paid step
Sites that outgrow the free meter and need the next limit, billed per month or per unit beyond the free allowance.
Flat monthly fee or usage
Pricing Comparison
| Tool | Free plan, in its own unit | What ends the free plan | First paid price |
|---|---|---|---|
500 builds a month, 100 custom domains per project, 20,000 files per site, 25 MiB per asset | Builds past 500 a month, or Functions past the free Workers quota | Workers Paid, $5/mo minimum per account for Functions | |
Netlify | 300 credits a month, 15 per production deploy, 20 per GB of bandwidth, one concurrent build | The month's credits run out | Personal $9/mo with 1,000 credits; Pro from $20/mo with 3,000 credits a month and unlimited members |
Vercel | Hobby: 100 GB fast data transfer, 1M CDN requests and 1M function invocations a month | Commercial use, which Hobby does not allow, or the monthly allowances | Pro, $20/mo, with team seats |
Sites up to 1 GB, a soft bandwidth limit, a soft limit of 10 builds an hour | Commercial sites: Pages is not for online businesses, e-commerce or SaaS | Private repos need GitHub Pro, Team or Enterprise; Team is $4 USD per user a month on GitHub's pricing page | |
10 GB of storage and a monthly transfer cap of the same size, files up to 2 GB | Transfer past the monthly cap, which takes the site offline until the next month | Blaze, pay as you go: $0.15 per GB of transfer and $0.026 per GB of storage above the free allowance | |
Render | 750 instance hours a month per workspace, 512 MB RAM; static sites free (bandwidth and build minutes count) | Instance hours used up: free web services are suspended until the start of the next month | Web service from $7/mo for 512 MB RAM |
1M requests and 20 GiB of egress a month, 5 custom domains, 10 active CPU hours | Monthly requests or egress past the cap | Pro $20/mo: 5M requests then $2 per million, 200 GiB egress then $0.20 per GiB | |
Railway | A 30-day trial with credits, then $1/mo; up to 1 vCPU and 0.5 GB RAM per service | The 30-day trial ends | Hobby: $5 minimum usage a month; Pro has a higher minimum |
Prices and limits as of October 2026 on Cloudflare Pages limits, Cloudflare plans, Workers pricing, Netlify pricing, Vercel pricing, Vercel Hobby plan, GitHub Pages limits, GitHub pricing, Firebase Hosting quotas, Render pricing, Render free instances, Deno Deploy pricing and Railway pricing. Netlify archive copies: September 6, 2025 and October 4, 2025.
Mistakes to Avoid
- ×
Choosing on storage, which is rarely the limit that ends a free plan
- ×
Building a business site on a plan that restricts commercial use
- ×
Forgetting that a free Render web service sleeps when traffic stops
- ×
Assuming a trial stays free after its 30 days
Expert Tips
- →
Estimate monthly transfer as page views times average page weight, then compare the total with each plan's transfer cap
- →
On Netlify, count production deploys per month before choosing, since each one draws credits
- →
Put the first paid step in the budget before launch, not after the first limit is reached
Red Flags to Watch For
-
A free plan that disables the site once a monthly cap is hit
-
A free plan limited to personal or non-commercial use
-
A free service that sleeps when a visitor needs it most
The Bottom Line
A static site or side project that stays inside its meter should pay nothing, and the free tiers here handle that job well. Skip the free tier for a business whose traffic or deploy count is climbing, because Netlify credits, Firebase's transfer cap and Render's sleep rule each turn into a problem at the wrong moment. Use GitHub Pages for open source and Vercel's Hobby plan for personal projects only, and treat Railway's free tier as a month of trial. For paid plans, see best web hosting.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is there a free web hosting plan a business can use?
Yes, for a static site with modest traffic. Cloudflare Pages and Netlify both have free plans that run on monthly limits, and Firebase Hosting has a no-cost plan with a monthly transfer cap. Vercel's Hobby plan is for personal, non-commercial use, and GitHub Pages does not allow online businesses, so check the use rule before you build.
What happens when a free hosting plan runs out?
It depends on the meter. Firebase Hosting disables a site once it passes its monthly transfer cap, until the next month, unless the account moves to Blaze. Render suspends free web services until the next month once their monthly instance hours are used up, and Netlify draws deploys, bandwidth and compute from one monthly credit pool.
How much does Cloudflare Pages cost after the free plan?
Pages hosting has no monthly fee on the free plan. Pages Functions count against the Workers quota, and a Workers Paid plan carries a $5 monthly minimum per account. The Cloudflare Pro plan is $20 a month billed yearly or $25 billed monthly, and it raises the build allowance to 5,000 a month.
Does a free Render web service sleep?
Yes. A free web service spins down after 15 minutes without inbound traffic and starts again on the next request, which can take a while. The spin-down rule is written for free web services, and Render's free static sites count only against bandwidth and pipeline minutes.
Is Netlify's free plan enough for a small site?
For a static site with a few deploys a month, probably. The monthly allowance covers about 20 production deploys, or about 15 GB of bandwidth, by our arithmetic on Netlify's printed rates. A Hacker News commenter reported in February 2026 burning through 1,000 Netlify build credits in under 12 hours after rebuilding every 15 minutes.
Is GitHub Pages free for a business?
No. GitHub's limits page says Pages is not intended or allowed for online businesses, e-commerce sites or SaaS. Public repositories are free to publish, and private repositories need a paid GitHub plan.
Cite this page: Toolradar, "Best Free Web Hosting in 2026", updated October 2026, https://toolradar.com/guides/best-free-web-hosting
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