Both Netlify and Vercel offer free tiers. Netlify provides "Free" while Vercel offers "Hobby".
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180 days and then lapses on its own, with nothing about the vendor having changed; a standing condition — a free tier withdrawn and not restored, a product retired — does not lapse with time.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.)
Hobby plan, $0 a month, for non-commercial personal use only. Includes 100 GB Fast Data Transfer, 1M Edge Requests, 1M Function Invocations, 4 hours Fluid Active CPU, 360 GB-hrs Fluid Provisioned Memory, 1 GB Blob Storage and 5K image transformations a month. Hobby accounts are limited to these caps and cannot buy more usage. Pro is $20 a month with one deploying seat; each additional deploying seat is $20 a month.
Vercel restricts Hobby to non-commercial personal use: a deployment used for anyone's financial gain, including a paid employee or consultant writing the code, needs a Pro or Enterprise plan. (From vercel.com/docs/limits/fair-use-guidelines, read 2026-10-04.)
In most cases, exceeding Hobby plan usage limits requires waiting 30 days before using the feature again. (From vercel.com/docs/plans/hobby, read 2026-10-07.)
On Hobby, Vercel's terms let it use your content to train its AI models and share it with third parties for their model training; you can opt out in your team settings. (From vercel.com/legal/terms, read 2026-10-07.)
After 30 days, Vercel deletes a Hobby project's old deployments except its 3 most recent production deployments, its 3 most recent deployments of any type and its current production deployment. A team over its 10 GB of Deployment Storage loses those other deployments immediately. (From vercel.com/changelog/hobby-projects-now-retain-fewer-deployments-to-free-up-storage, read 2026-10-12.)
Flat Rate CDN is available on Pro plans. Pro includes the lowest tier at no extra cost: 1M CDN requests and 1 TB of data transfer a month. Paid tiers are $20 a month for 10M requests and 50 TB, $100 for 50M and 50 TB, and $300 for 150M and 50 TB. A Pro team turns it on in Billing settings. Usage above a tier moves the team to a higher tier at the start of the next cycle. Flat Rate CDN is not for bulk file distribution or download services, or large-scale media or file delivery that uses most bandwidth. (From vercel.com/docs/pricing/flat-rate-cdn, read 2026-10-16.)
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 ↗
Vercel
restructuredeffective 2026-07-20medium impact
By July 20, 2026, new Vercel Pro and Enterprise accounts use Elastic build machines by default, which scale between 4 and 30 vCPUs and bill $0.0035 per CPU minute. From February 2026 the default for new Pro projects had been Turbo, billed at $0.126 a minute. Vercel now lists Turbo at $0.105 a minute and Standard at $0.014. Source ↗
restructuredeffective 2026-02-01medium impact
New Pro projects now default to Turbo build machines (30 vCPUs, 60GB memory) at $0.126/minute — 9x more expensive than Standard machines ($0.014/min). Pro plan still $20/seat/month with $20 usage credit, but real-world build costs for moderate teams can hit $400+/month. Standard machines still available but must be manually selected. Source ↗
restructuredeffective 2025-09-09medium impact
On 2025-09-09 Vercel replaced the Pro plan's fixed allowance for each resource with $20 of usage credit a month, applied to existing teams automatically from October 2025. Source ↗
Watch Both Vendors for Pricing Changes
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