Everything you need to build, deploy, and ship frontend projects — without spending a dollar. This guide recommends the best free tier for each layer of a frontend/Jamstack stack — 10 categories from static hosting to feature flags — with exact limits for each. Figures in the tables below come from our records for 1,498 developer tools.
Designed for solo developers, freelancers, and small teams building websites, web apps, and Jamstack projects. Each recommendation includes alternatives, a "when you'll outgrow it" guide, and stability notes based on our tracking of 513 real pricing changes. The limits on this page were read from vendor pricing pages between 2026-07-05 and 2026-11-08.
$0/month
Total estimated monthly cost for a personal site or small project
$0 covers the 8 of 9 picks whose free tier our own badge still reads as active. It does not cover Cloudflare DNS (unrated — change not reconciled).
Free authoritative DNS hosting — unlimited zones and queries, DDoS protection, free SSL/TLS. Records-per-zone… not confirmed · read not reconciled · 2026-10-18
Unlimited bandwidth, 500 builds/month, 1 build at a time. Automatic edge deployment to 300+ locations. Git integration, preview deploys, and serverless Functions included. The most generous free hosting for static and Jamstack sites.
Up to 100 projects, unlimited bandwidth, 500 builds/month, 100 custom domains per project. The project limit is not routinely increased.
Cloudflare recommends starting new projects on Workers, its primary platform for building applications. (From developers.cloudflare.com/pages, read 2026-10-06.)
Pages Functions and Workers requests share a daily free limit of 100,000 that resets at midnight UTC. Static asset requests are free and unlimited. (From developers.cloudflare.com/pages/functions/pricing, read 2026-10-06.)
At the daily limit, fail open serves static assets without Functions. Fail closed returns an error page. Each project chooses one mode. (From developers.cloudflare.com/pages/functions/routing, read 2026-10-06.)
Cloudflare's terms prohibit processing or collecting credit card information on any site using its free services. (From cloudflare.com/terms, read 2026-10-06.)
Cloudflare's subscription agreement's list of restrictions does not include commercial use. The only restriction specific to free services bars processing or collecting credit card information on the site. (From cloudflare.com/terms, read 2026-10-29.)
Cloudflare's subscription agreement bars signing up for the services on behalf of a third party unless Cloudflare permits it in writing. (From cloudflare.com/terms, read 2026-10-29.)
Cloudflare may change a project's pages.dev subdomain for any reason, and aims to give at least a week's notice. Custom domains are not affected. (From cloudflare.com/service-specific-terms-developer-platform, read 2026-10-06.)
Paid plans such as Pro, Business and Enterprise allow up to 100,000 files per site once the environment variable PAGES_WRANGLER_MAJOR_VERSION=4 is set in the Pages project's settings. (From developers.cloudflare.com/pages/platform/limits, read 2026-10-29.)
Pages Functions requests are billed as Workers requests. The Workers Paid plan has a $5 minimum monthly charge per account. It includes 10 million requests and 30 million CPU milliseconds per month. Overages are $0.30 per million requests and $0.02 per million CPU milliseconds. (From developers.cloudflare.com/workers/platform/pricing, read 2026-10-29.)
Cloudflare's Pro and Business plans raise Pages' limits. Pro allows 5 concurrent builds, 5,000 builds per month and 250 custom domains per project. Business allows 20 concurrent builds, 20,000 builds per month and 500 custom domains per project. (From developers.cloudflare.com/pages/platform/limits, read 2026-10-29.)
Cloudflare's Pro plan costs $20 per month billed annually, or $25 billed monthly. Business costs $200 per month billed annually, or $250 billed monthly. (From cloudflare.com/plans, read 2026-10-29.)
When you'll outgrow it: When you need more than 500 builds/month or concurrent builds. Vercel offers 100 GB bandwidth with serverless functions. Netlify's Free plan gives 300 credits a month for deploys, compute and bandwidth; at 20 credits per GB, that is at most 15 GB of bandwidth. Accounts created before September 4, 2025 keep the legacy plan's 100 GB and 300 build minutes. GitHub Pages is unlimited bandwidth for public repos but static-only.
RecommendedCloudflare DNSFreeunrated — change not reconciled
Cloudflare's Free plan costs $0 and includes a CDN, DDoS protection and a Universal SSL certificate. Cloudflare's network is in more than 300 cities. The CDN caches and serves web pages; video and other large files need a paid Cloudflare service, and Cloudflare may limit a site that serves them without one.
Free authoritative DNS hosting — unlimited zones and queries, DDoS protection, free SSL/TLS. Records-per-zone cap is 200 for zones created on or after 2024-09-01; zones created before that date retain the legacy… not confirmed · read not reconciled · 2026-10-18
When you'll outgrow it: When you need advanced features like image optimization, video delivery, or custom caching rules beyond the free tier. Fastly offers free CDN for open-source projects. BunnyCDN starts at $0.01/GB with a 14-day trial.
Free Spark plan: 100K API requests/month, 500K API CDN requests, 10 GB bandwidth, 5 GB assets. Real-time collaborative editing, GROQ query language, and a customizable Studio. Generous enough for most content sites.
Sanity is a structured content platform. The Free plan offers 20 user seats and 2 public datasets. It includes 10,000 documents, 1M API CDN requests a month, 250,000 API requests a month, 100 GB assets, and 100 GB…
When you'll outgrow it: When you exceed 100K API requests/month or need more than 3 non-admin users. Strapi is self-hosted and completely free (unlimited everything). Contentful offers 25K records and 2M API calls. Hygraph gives 1M API operations/month on its free plan.
Unlimited forms, unlimited submissions, no branding on the free tier. Conditional logic, file uploads, payment collection, and integrations. The most generous free form builder — no per-submission caps.
Unlimited forms, unlimited submissions, collect payments, file uploads, e-signatures, conditional logic, calculations, 45+ languages. Integrations with Google Sheets, Notion, Airtable, Zapier, Make
When you'll outgrow it: When you need custom domains, team collaboration, or advanced integrations beyond webhooks. Formspree offers 50 submissions/month with API access. Typeform gives 10 responses/month with beautiful conversational forms.
1 million events/month free, with product analytics, session replay (5K recordings), feature flags, A/B testing, and surveys. The most complete analytics platform on a free tier — replaces 3-4 separate tools.
1M analytics events, 5K session recordings, 1M feature flag requests, experiments billed with feature flags, 100K error tracking exceptions, 1,500 survey responses, 10 GB of logs, 100K AI observability (LLM tracing)…
When you'll outgrow it: When you exceed 1M events/month or need more than 5K session replays. Plausible CE is self-hosted and unlimited. Umami is another self-hosted option with a simpler dashboard. Google Analytics is free at any scale but privacy-invasive.
When you'll outgrow it: When you exceed 5K errors/month or need more than 1 user. Highlight.io offers 500 sessions + 1K errors + 1M logs bundled. LogRocket gives 1K sessions/month with full session replay and performance monitoring.
25 credits/month (roughly 25K transformations or 25 GB managed storage). On-the-fly image and video transformations, responsive delivery, lazy loading, and format optimization. The standard for frontend media delivery.
Media management — 25 credits/month (1 credit = 1 GB storage OR 1 GB bandwidth OR 1K transformations), up to 3 users
Cloudinary's Free plan needs no credit card. (From cloudinary.com/pricing, read 2026-10-23.)
Cloudinary launched Claimable Clouds on August 5, 2026. Its docs say: "A Claimable Cloud is a working Cloudinary environment that an AI agent can provision on a user's behalf, with no signup and no existing credentials." A Claimable Cloud expires in 24 hours if unclaimed and is deleted. Media delivery is limited to the provisioning machine's IP and up to three others, and usage caps are lower until a person claims it. Claiming converts it to a Free plan account with the same credentials. (From cloudinary.com/documentation/claimable_cloud_provisioning, read 2026-11-06.)
Cloudinary's usage limits are soft: warnings come near 90% of a quota, and an account that stays over after repeated notices may be disabled. A disabled account cannot upload or create new transformations; delivery may continue for a time but can also be blocked. (From cloudinary.com/documentation/programmable_media_asset_usage_data, read 2026-11-06.)
No longer a free-tier pick: imgix — free tier removed.
When you'll outgrow it: When you exceed 25 credits/month or need video streaming. TinyPNG API has 500 free compressions/month. Cloudflare Images starts at $5/month for 100K images stored.
3,000 emails/month, 100 emails/day on the free tier. Modern developer-first email API with React Email support, deliverability insights, and simple SDK. Perfect for transactional emails and small newsletters.
Developer-first email API — 3K emails/month free (100/day cap), 3 domains, 1K marketing contacts/month, 5 AI credits, 30-day data retention
Until you verify a domain, Resend sends only from its resend.dev test domain, and only to the email address on your Resend account; mail to anyone else is refused with a 403 error. (From resend.com/docs/knowledge-base/403-error-resend-dev-domain, read 2026-10-20.)
Resend's free plan needs no credit card. (From resend.com/agents, read 2026-10-23.)
Resend launched Inboxes on October 22, 2026. "An inbox sends and receives email at an address on one of your domains." Every plan includes 3 Inboxes. Inboxes can be used by agents to receive tasks and updates. (From resend.com/blog/announcing-inboxes, read 2026-11-06.)
Broadcasts sent through the /broadcasts API or the dashboard do not count against the 3,000 transactional emails a month. Marketing plans are limited by contacts, not email volume. Emails sent or received through an inbox count towards the transactional emails quota. (From resend.com/pricing, read 2026-11-06.)
When you'll outgrow it: When you exceed 3K emails/month or need dedicated IP. Buttondown offers 100 subscribers free for newsletters specifically. Mailchimp gives 250 contacts with marketing automation. Brevo offers 300 emails/day and up to 100,000 contacts.
Free for up to 3 Figma files and 3 FigJam files. Real-time collaboration, components, auto-layout, Dev Mode preview. The industry standard for UI design and handoff — most component libraries ship Figma files.
Collaborative design tool — free Starter plan with unlimited personal drafts, unlimited viewers/commenters, unlimited cloud storage, 30-day version history, 150 AI credits/day (500/mo). Team projects limited to 3 Figma…
When you'll outgrow it: When you need more than 3 active files or team libraries. Penpot is open-source with unlimited files — self-hosted or free cloud. Canva offers free design with templates. Framer provides free website publishing with its design tool.
1 million API requests/month for feature flags, plus built-in A/B testing and multivariate experiments. No separate tool needed — same platform as your analytics. Includes targeting by user properties, percentages, and cohorts.
1M analytics events, 5K session recordings, 1M feature flag requests, experiments billed with feature flags, 100K error tracking exceptions, 1,500 survey responses, 10 GB of logs, 100K AI observability (LLM tracing)…
When you'll outgrow it: When you exceed 1M feature flag requests/month or need advanced targeting. Flagsmith offers 50K requests/month with a self-hosted option. Unleash is open-source for self-hosting. LaunchDarkly's free Developer tier supports 1K MAU.
Stability Notes
Recent pricing changes affecting vendors in this stack. Based on our tracking of 513 deal changes across 1,498+ developer tools.
new free tierLogRocket: By November 5, 2026, LogRocket's pricing page listed a Free plan again. It offers 1,000 sessions a month free forever. LogRocket Galileo ... Source ↗
pricing restructuredVercel: By July 20, 2026, new Vercel Pro and Enterprise accounts use Elastic build machines by default, which scale between 4 and 30 vCPUs and bi... Source ↗
pricing model changeNetlify: 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 req... Source ↗
limits increasedNetlify: Form submissions are now free across all Credit plans (including the Credit Free tier) — previously each form submission cost 1 credit. C... Source ↗
restrictionNetlify: 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 ... Source ↗
pricing restructuredVercel: New Pro projects now default to Turbo build machines (30 vCPUs, 60GB memory) at $0.126/minute — 9x more expensive than Standard machines ... Source ↗
pricing restructuredVercel: 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 team... Source ↗
pricing restructuredNetlify: Restructured to credit-based pricing for accounts created from 2025-09-04; Free projects pause when the month's credits run out. Accounts... Source ↗
limits reducedSentry: Sentry cut the included spans in all plans from 10M to 5M a month and added 5GB of logs to every plan, including the free Developer plan. Source ↗
free tier removedimgix: Imgix replaced its self-service Free plan ($0, up to 1,000 origin images) with a 30-day trial of 100 credits when it moved to credit-base... Source ↗
pricing restructuredSentry: Sentry changed how it bills tracing from performance units to span units. Source ↗
For each category, there's an open-source option you can run on your own hardware — no limits, no vendor lock-in, complete control over your stack.
Category
Tool
Details
Hosting
Hugo / Astro
Static site generators — build locally, deploy anywhere. Hugo is the fastest SSG; Astro supports React/Vue/Svelte islands.
CDN
Caddy + Varnish
Self-hosted reverse proxy with automatic HTTPS (Caddy) and HTTP cache (Varnish). Full CDN behavior on your own infrastructure.
CMS
Strapi
Open-source headless CMS. Self-hosted, unlimited content types and entries. REST and GraphQL APIs. Full admin panel.
Forms
Formio
Open-source form builder with drag-and-drop UI, conditional logic, and submissions management. Self-hosted, unlimited forms.
Analytics
Plausible CE / Umami
Privacy-first self-hosted analytics. No cookies, GDPR-compliant, lightweight script. Unlimited pageviews and sites.
Error Tracking
Sentry (self-hosted)
Full Sentry platform self-hosted. Unlimited errors, users, and projects. Docker Compose deployment.
Images
imgproxy
On-the-fly image processing server. Resize, crop, convert formats. Tiny memory footprint, fast Go implementation.
Design
Penpot
Open-source design and prototyping platform. Real-time collaboration, SVG-native, no file limits. Self-hosted or free cloud.
When You'll Outgrow Free Tiers
Most personal sites, portfolios, and small projects can run their entire frontend stack on free tiers indefinitely. Here's what typically hits limits first:
Build minutes (Cloudflare Pages 500/month) — frequent deploys and large sites burn through builds fast
CMS content (Sanity 100K API requests) — high-traffic content sites with many pages and API calls
Error volume (Sentry 5K/month) — production apps with noisy error reporting
Image transformations (Cloudinary 25 credits) — media-heavy sites with many image variants
The good news: bandwidth is rarely the bottleneck. Cloudflare's Free plan lists no bandwidth or request quota, and Cloudflare Pages' docs say requests to static assets are free and unlimited on every plan. Video and other large files need a paid Cloudflare service to be served through the CDN. The self-hosted alternatives above have no limits at all.
Need backend infrastructure too? See our Free Startup Stack for databases, auth, and backend hosting. Building DevOps? Check the Free DevOps Stack. Or search our full index of 1,498+ developer deals.
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