Both Netlify and Railway offer free tiers. Netlify provides "Free" while Railway offers "Free".
A verdict here is not a fixed property of the vendor. A one-off pricing event demotes a vendor while its recorded date falls in the last 180 days and then lapses on its own, with nothing about the vendor having changed; a standing condition — a free tier withdrawn and not restored, a product retired — does not lapse with time. A badge carrying a date states the record it rests on; a badge with no date rests on no record in force.
The Free plan is $0 with a limit of 300 credits per month, covering production deploys (15 credits each), compute (10 credits per GB-hour), bandwidth (20 credits per GB) and web requests (2 credits per 10k requests). Netlify says the Free plan is always free, with hard monthly limits that cannot be exceeded or incur costs; extra credits need a paid plan. Personal is $9 a month with 1,000 credits.
New Free-plan projects created on or after August 19, 2026 show a "Powered by Netlify" badge to every visitor by default; you can turn it off for each project under Project configuration > General. (From docs.netlify.com/manage/projects/powered-by-netlify-badge, read 2026-10-12.)
Netlify Database compute and bandwidth use the same 300 monthly credits as other Free plan features. Compute costs 10 credits per unit, with one unit used per hour at 1 compute unit. Bandwidth costs 20 credits per GB. This allows about 30 hours of database activity if no other features use credits. (From docs.netlify.com/build/data-and-storage/netlify-database/billing-and-usage, read 2026-10-21.)
On the Free plan, an account can have 3 databases. Each runs at 1 compute unit, sleeps after 5 minutes without activity and cannot be set to stay on. Each is limited to 5 GB of storage, and to 5 GB of data written and 5 GB of bandwidth per billing period. (From docs.netlify.com/build/data-and-storage/netlify-database/billing-and-usage, read 2026-10-21.)
Netlify says its Free plan can be used for commercial projects as well as personal sites, in a blog post dated November 12, 2024. (From netlify.com/blog/introducing-netlify-free-plan, read 2026-10-23.)
An agent can deploy to Netlify with no account using the --allow-anonymous flag. The deploy gets a live URL, and a person has one hour to claim it by logging in or signing up. Sites using serverless or edge functions still need an account. (From docs.netlify.com/start/quickstarts/deploy-from-ai-code-generation-tool, read 2026-10-22.)
Free $0 per month. Start with a 30-day free trial with $5 credits, then $1 of free credit per month. Up to 1 vCPU / 0.5 GB RAM per service. 0.5 GB of volume storage. 2 replicas during the free trial, then 1. Projects: 5 during trial, then 1
After the 30-day trial, the Free plan allows 1 project, 3 services per project and no custom domains. Cron jobs are available during the trial only. (From railway.com/pricing, read 2026-10-12.)
Railway's trial, with a one-time $5 credit, needs no credit card. (From railway.com/pricing, read 2026-10-22.)
After 30 days passes or $5 is spent, the free trial reverts to the Free plan, which provides $1 of free credit per month. The credit does not roll over month to month. (From docs.railway.com/pricing/free-trial, read 2026-11-03.)
Run `ssh railway.new` to get a free Linux VM with no account or credit card. The VM has 2 vCPU, 2 GB RAM, and a preview URL. Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode, and the Railway Agent are preinstalled. Railway identifies you by your SSH key. Each VM can be used for 60 minutes. You can get 3 VMs per IP address per day. (From docs.railway.com/pricing/free-trial, read 2026-11-02.)
Open the claim link from the welcome message and sign up within 24 hours to keep the VM. The VM, files, and URL move into your account. Unclaimed VMs are deleted with their files. Railway caps free VMs at high demand. (From docs.railway.com/pricing/free-trial, read 2026-11-02.)
Railway Sandboxes are available on every plan. Usage draws from the plan's included credit. Free plan limits are 10 sandboxes per environment, 2 vCPU and 2 GB each, and an idle timeout of at most 5 minutes. (From docs.railway.com/sandboxes, read 2026-11-03.)
SMTP is only available on Railway's Pro plan and above. SMTP is disabled on the Free, Trial, and Hobby plans. Those plans must use transactional email services with HTTPS APIs. (From docs.railway.com/networking/outbound-networking, read 2026-11-07.)
Railway's Hobby plan has a $5 monthly minimum, including $5 of usage credits. If usage is $5 or less per billing period, no extra charge applies. If usage exceeds $5, Railway charges the total usage. Included usage resets each billing cycle and does not accumulate. (From railway.com/pricing, read 2026-11-10.)
The Limited Trial for trial accounts not verified through GitHub has restricted outbound network access and only a limited set of ports. Verification is an automated process at railway.com/verify. Railway does not respond to requests for verification. The Hobby plan unlocks the full experience. (From docs.railway.com/pricing/free-trial, read 2026-11-07.)
Railway deletes stateful volumes created by Trial accounts 30 days after the expiration of the trial credits. An upgrade retains the data. (From docs.railway.com/pricing/free-trial, read 2026-11-07.)
Netlify changed its credit rates: bandwidth went from 10 to 20 credits per GB and compute from 5 to 10 credits per GB-hour, while web requests went from 3 to 2 credits per 10,000. The Free plan keeps 300 credits a month, so each credit buys half as much bandwidth and compute. Source ↗
increasedeffective 2026-04-14medium impact
Form submissions are now free across all Credit plans (including the Credit Free tier) — previously each form submission cost 1 credit. Credit Pro also gained unlimited team seats (was $20/seat per Git contributor), which effectively removes the prior CMS/Identity 'every committer becomes a $19 Pro seat' gotcha for free-tier users who ever upgrade. Source ↗
restrictedeffective 2026-03-01high impact
No longer in force (2026-04-14). Every repo committer is now charged as a full Pro seat ($19/mo) when using Netlify CMS or Identity with a private repo. Previously only users who logged into the Netlify dashboard counted as seats Reversed 2026-04-14: Netlify's pricing page now states that as of April 14th, credit-based Pro plans no longer charge for any seat. The per-committer charge described here is no longer in force. Source ↗
restructuredeffective 2025-09-04medium impact
Restructured to credit-based pricing for accounts created from 2025-09-04; Free projects pause when the month's credits run out. Accounts created before that date stay on their legacy plans unless they switch. Source ↗
Railway
neweffective 2026-09-25medium impact
Railway added a free VM accessible via `ssh railway.new` with no account or credit card needed. Each VM has 2 vCPU / 2 GB, preinstalled coding agents, and a preview URL. You have 60 minutes to build, then 24 hours to claim the VM into an account. Source ↗
neweffective 2025-09-03medium impact
Railway added a Free plan: after the 30-day trial, $1 of free credit a month. It first appears in the Internet Archive's 2025-09-03 capture; the 2025-08-24 capture has no Free plan. Source ↗
reducedeffective 2025-06-30medium impact
Railway's trial credit now expires. The one-time $5 grant, which previously did not expire, lasts 30 days. The Internet Archive's 2025-06-26 capture still says the credits do not expire; the 2025-06-30 capture says they expire in 30 days. Source ↗
Watch Both Vendors for Pricing Changes
We do not push notifications. Every change we record is readable the moment it lands, and the JSON answer carries an ETag — send it back as If-None-Match and an unchanged answer costs one 304.