Compare 15+ cloud hosting and PaaS services: Railway, Vercel, Render, Netlify, Fly.io, Cloudflare Workers/Pages, Deno Deploy, Koyeb, Val Town, Google Cloud Run and more. Free tiers, bandwidth limits, build minutes, and pricing gotchas. Compiled 2026-04-13, not re-checked since.
Published 2026-04-13 · Not yet reviewed · 15 platforms compared · Figures compiled 2026-04-13, not re-checked since · 23 pricing changes tracked
Cloud hosting in April 2026: 15 platforms across four categories — traditional PaaS, edge/serverless, full-featured platforms, and static/specialized hosts. $5/month has become the entry price for always-on compute (Railway Hobby, Heroku Eco). Cloudflare dominates the free tier with unlimited bandwidth and 100K requests/day. The big shift: credit-based pricing is replacing flat-rate plans (Vercel Jan 2026, Netlify Sep 2025).
Key trends: Heroku's free tier removal (2022) drove a migration wave to Railway, Render, and Fly.io. Netlify's move to credit-based pricing (Sep 2025) replaced flat bandwidth and build-minute limits with a single 300-credit monthly allowance. Google is flooding the market with generous always-free tiers (Cloud Run: 2M requests/month). Edge computing is making traditional PaaS less necessary for many workloads.
This guide covers: pricing tables, category breakdowns, free tier analysis, cost comparison for solo devs and teams, hidden costs, pricing gotchas, and best-for-use-case recommendations — compiled by hand from vendor pricing pages.
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Compiled 2026-04-13, not re-checked since. Hover rows to highlight. Click platform names for full vendor profiles with free tier details.
| Platform | Free Tier | Paid From | Free Bandwidth | Free Compute |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Railway | Free plan: $0/mo, $1/mo min after trial | $5/mo (Hobby) | None included ($0.05/GB) | Up to 1 vCPU, 0.5 GB RAM per service |
| Render | Free web services | $7/mo (Individual) | 5 GB (then $0.15/GB) | Less than 1 CPU, 512 MB RAM (spins down) |
| Fly.io | None (pay-as-you-go) | $0 (usage-based) | 100 GB (legacy) | None (legacy: 3 shared VMs) |
| Koyeb | DB only | $29/mo (Pro) | — | None (free Postgres DB only) |
| Northflank | 2 services | $0.007/hr | Included | 2 services (0.2 vCPU, 512 MB each) |
| Cloudflare Workers | 100K requests/day | $5/mo (Workers Paid) | Unlimited | 100K requests/day, 10ms CPU/req |
| Cloudflare Pages | Unlimited sites | $5/mo (via Workers Paid) | Unlimited | Unlimited requests, 100K functions/day |
| Netlify | 300 credits/mo (~15 GB) | $19/mo (Pro) | ~15 GB (300 credits at 20/GB) | 10 credits/GB-hour |
| Deno Deploy | 1M requests/mo | $20/mo (Pro) | 20 GiB | 1M requests/mo, 10 hrs active CPU |
| Val Town | Free tier | $10/mo (Pro) | Included | Free requests with limits |
| Vercel | Hobby plan (free) | $20/mo (Pro) | 100 GB | 100 GB bandwidth, serverless functions |
| Google Cloud Run | Always free tier | Usage-based | 1 GB North America | 2M requests/mo, 360K vCPU-sec, 180K GiB-sec |
| GitHub Pages | Free (static sites) | N/A (free only) | 100 GB/mo | N/A (static hosting) |
| PythonAnywhere | 1 web app | $0 (Hacker tier removed) | Included | 1 web app, 512 MB storage |
| Heroku | Removed (2022) | $5/mo (Eco dynos) | Included | None free |
Cloud hosting platforms fall into four categories, each optimized for different workloads and developer preferences.
Deploy containers or code with familiar push-to-deploy workflows. Best for traditional web apps, APIs, and background workers that need persistent compute.
Free plan: $0/month, opening with a 30-day trial carrying $5 of credits, then a $1/month minimum. Up to 1 vCPU and 0.5 GB RAM per service, 0.5 GB volume storage, 1 project, 3 services. Hobby plan ($5/mo minimum usage) includes $5 of monthly usage credits, not a free allowance. Supports Docker, Node, Python, Go, Rust, and more. Built-in Postgres, Redis, MySQL.
Free web services with less than 1 CPU, 512 MB RAM, auto-sleep after 15 minutes of inactivity. 750 build hours/month, 5 GB bandwidth/month included then $0.15/GB. Free PostgreSQL (90-day expiry, 256 MB). Free Redis (25 MB, 50 connections). Supports Docker, Node, Python, Go, Ruby, Rust.
No free tier for new accounts since October 2024. Pay-as-you-go only, credit card required. Legacy accounts (Hobby/Launch/Scale plans) retain: 3 shared-cpu-1x VMs (256 MB RAM), 3 GB volume storage, 100 GB transfer/month. Volume snapshots: first 10 GB free, then $0.08/GB/month.
Free Postgres database (0.25 vCPU, 1 GB RAM, 1 GB storage, 5 hr/month runtime). No free compute/web service tier — Pro plan starts at $29/month with $10 included compute.
Developer plan: 2 free services with 0.2 vCPU and 512 MB RAM each. Supports containers, buildpacks, and databases. Auto-deploy from Git. Built-in secrets management, job scheduling, and observability.
Run code at the edge with zero cold starts and automatic global distribution. Best for APIs, static sites with functions, and latency-sensitive applications.
100,000 requests/day, 10ms CPU time per invocation, 1 MB script size. Runs on Cloudflare's 300+ edge locations. V8 isolates — no cold starts. KV storage: 100K reads/day, 1K writes/day. R2 storage: 10 GB free. Workers AI: 10K neurons/day.
Unlimited sites, unlimited bandwidth, 500 builds/month. Pages Functions (serverless): 100K requests/day free. Deploy from Git or direct upload. Custom domains, SSL included. Preview deployments for every commit. 25 MB max file size.
300 credits/month, spent across deploys (15 credits each), bandwidth (20 credits/GB), compute (10 credits/GB-hour) and web requests (2 credits/10K) — about 15 GB of bandwidth if you spend the whole allowance on it. Legacy accounts opened before September 2025 keep 100 GB bandwidth and 300 build minutes. Deploy from Git. Instant rollbacks, preview deploys, custom domains, SSL. Edge Functions (Deno-based) included.
1 million requests/month, 20 GiB outbound bandwidth, 10 hours of active CPU per month, 1 GiB KV storage, 1M KV read units/month. Runs on 35+ edge locations globally. Zero cold starts. Built-in KV storage (Deno KV). Instant deployments from Git.
Code snippets ("vals") that run as HTTP endpoints, cron jobs, or email handlers. Free tier includes public vals, SQLite storage, email sending. Community-driven code sharing. TypeScript/JavaScript runtime. Instant deployment.
Enterprise-grade platforms with rich ecosystems. Best for production applications that need the full toolchain — CI/CD, monitoring, databases, and team management.
Hobby plan: 100 GB bandwidth/month, 6,000 build minutes/month, 100K function invocations/day, 10s function duration, 1 concurrent build. Deploy from Git with preview deployments. Optimized for Next.js, supports all frameworks. Edge Functions, Image Optimization, Analytics (limited).
Always Free tier: 2 million requests/month, 360,000 vCPU-seconds, 180,000 GiB-seconds of memory, 1 GB outbound (North America). Runs containers, auto-scales to zero. Supports any language/framework via Docker. Integrated with Google Cloud ecosystem.
Free tier completely removed November 2022. Cheapest option: Eco dynos at $5/month (shared, sleeps after 30 min inactivity) or Basic at $7/month (always on). Still widely used for its developer experience. Heroku Startups program offers credits for qualifying startups.
Focused hosting for specific use cases. Static sites, Python apps, or developer documentation. Simple and free for what they do well.
Free static site hosting from GitHub repos. 100 GB bandwidth/month, 1 GB storage, 10 builds per hour via GitHub Actions. Custom domains, SSL. Perfect for docs, portfolios, blogs. Jekyll built-in, supports any static site generator.
1 free web app on yourusername.pythonanywhere.com. 512 MB storage, daily CPU seconds limit. Python 2.7/3.x. Built-in Bash console, MySQL database. No custom domain on free tier. Good for learning and small projects.
Free tiers range from genuinely production-ready (Cloudflare, Vercel) to barely-functional trials (Fly.io). Here's the honest breakdown.
| Platform | Free Tier Type | Bandwidth | Build Minutes | When You Hit the Wall |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Railway | Free credits | None included ($0.05/GB) | Included | When credits run out |
| Render | Limited free tier | 5 GB (then $0.15/GB) | 750 hrs/mo | Weeks of moderate use |
| Fly.io | No free tier | 100 GB (legacy) | N/A (Docker) | Immediately ($5/mo minimum) |
| Koyeb | Limited free tier | — | — | Weeks of moderate use |
| Northflank | Limited free tier | Included | Included | Weeks of moderate use |
| Cloudflare Workers | Generous free tier | Unlimited | N/A | Months of real traffic |
| Cloudflare Pages | Generous free tier | Unlimited | 500/mo | Months of real traffic |
| Netlify | Limited free tier | ~15 GB (300 credits at 20/GB) | ~20 deploys (15 credits each) | Weeks of moderate use |
| Deno Deploy | Generous free tier | 20 GiB | N/A (instant) | Months of real traffic |
| Val Town | Generous free tier | Included | N/A | Months of real traffic |
| Vercel | Generous free tier | 100 GB | 6000/mo | Months of real traffic |
| Google Cloud Run | Generous free tier | 1 GB North America | 120/day (Cloud Build) | Months of real traffic |
| GitHub Pages | Generous free tier | 100 GB/mo | 10/hr (Actions) | Months of real traffic |
| PythonAnywhere | Limited free tier | Included | N/A | Weeks of moderate use |
| Heroku | No free tier | Included | Included | Immediately ($5/mo minimum) |
What does each platform actually cost for a solo developer running a side project versus a team of 5 with production traffic?
| Platform | Solo Dev /mo | Team of 5 /mo | Key Cost Factor |
|---|---|---|---|
| Railway | $1–5 | $20/seat | The $5 trial credit is one-time — once the 30 days end the Free plan carries a $... |
| Render | $0–7 | $19/seat + usage | Free web services spin down after 15 minutes (was 30, tightened Sep 2025). Free ... |
| Fly.io | Usage-based | $29/mo (Scale) + usage | No free tier for new accounts — pay-as-you-go from day one. Legacy free allowanc... |
| Koyeb | $29+ | Usage-based | No free compute tier — the free plan only includes a Postgres database with 5 hr... |
| Northflank | $0–10 | Usage-based | Limited to 2 services on free tier. Database add-ons are separate. Scaling beyon... |
| Cloudflare Workers | $0–5 | $5+ | 10ms CPU time limit is restrictive for compute-heavy tasks. 1 MB script size lim... |
| Cloudflare Pages | $0 | $0–5 | 500 builds/month can be limiting for active repos with many commits. Functions s... |
| Netlify | $0–19 | $19/seat | Every action draws on one credit pool, so builds and traffic compete — and sites... |
| Deno Deploy | $0 | $20+ | Deno runtime only — no Node.js compatibility layer for all packages. 50ms CPU li... |
| Val Town | $0–10 | $10+ | Free tier vals are public. Private vals require Pro ($10/mo). Limited compute pe... |
| Vercel | $0 | $20/seat | WATCH: New Pro projects default to Turbo build machines ($0.126/min vs $0.014/mi... |
| Google Cloud Run | $0 | Usage-based | Google Cloud account required with billing enabled. Egress to other regions is e... |
| GitHub Pages | $0 | $0 | Static sites only — no server-side code. Public repos only on free GitHub (priva... |
| PythonAnywhere | $0–12 | Per-account | $5 Hacker tier was eliminated (Jan 2026). Jump from free to $12/month for custom... |
| Heroku | $5–7 | $7/dyno + add-ons | No free tier at all. Add-on costs stack up fast (Postgres Mini $5/mo, Redis Mini... |
The sticker price is rarely the full story. These are the costs that surprise developers after they commit to a platform.
New Pro projects on Vercel default to Turbo build machines at $0.126/min — 9 times the cost of Standard builds ($0.014/min). A 5-minute build costs $0.63 on Turbo vs $0.07 on Standard. Switch to Standard builds in project settings unless you genuinely need faster builds.
Free web services on Render spin down after 15 minutes of inactivity (tightened from 30 minutes in Sep 2025). Cold starts take 30–60 seconds. Not viable for APIs that need to respond quickly. The workaround costs $7/month (Individual plan, always-on).
Railway's Trial plan gives a one-time $5 credit. Once it's gone, services stop. Hobby plan ($5/mo) resets monthly but usage can exceed the credit — a busy API can cost $10–20/month. Monitor your usage dashboard closely.
Cloudflare Workers free tier uses daily quotas (100K requests/day), not monthly. A traffic spike on one day gets throttled even if your monthly average is well under limits. The 10ms CPU time limit per request also restricts compute-heavy operations.
Cloud hosting pricing has been volatile. Here are the changes we've tracked. See full change timeline for all tracked changes.
| Date | Vendor | Change | Impact |
|---|---|---|---|
| discovered Sep 9, 2026 · effective date unknown | GitHub | GitHub Copilot access for students is now limited. Previously offering full access, it now offers a plan with 'limited chat and agent usage with models available through auto model selection only'. Additionally, new Copilot Student signups are paused until 2026-04-20 due to infrastructure strain. Source ↗ | MEDIUM |
| discovered Sep 7, 2026 · effective date unknown | Vercel | The Hobby plan still exists, but several limits have been adjusted or are now pay-as-you-go. Edge Requests are now 1M included / month, then starting at $2 per 1M. Fast Data Transfer is 100 GB / month included, then starting at $0.15 per GB. Blob Storage is 1 GB / month included, then $0.023 per GB. Image Transformations are 5K / month included, then starting at $0.05 per 1K. Function Invocations are 1M / month included, then starting at $0.60 per 1M. Active CPU is 4 hours / month included, then starting at $0.128 per hour. Provisioned Memory is 360 GB-hrs / month included, then starting at $0.0106 per GB-hr. Source ↗ | HIGH |
| discovered Sep 7, 2026 · effective date unknown | Netlify | The free tier now offers 300 credits/month. Source ↗ | MEDIUM |
| discovered Sep 3, 2026 · effective date unknown | Railway | The free tier now has a $1/month minimum after the trial, and the number of projects is reduced to 1 after the trial. The free trial now offers 2 replicas instead of 1. Source ↗ | MEDIUM |
| discovered Sep 2, 2026 · effective date unknown | Render | The free tier now includes compute options with varying RAM and CPU, and the limits for PostgreSQL and Key Value stores have been updated. Bandwidth for the Hobby tier is now 5GB included per month, then $0.15 per GB. Source ↗ | HIGH |
| discovered Sep 2, 2026 · effective date unknown | Cloudflare | The program now offers up to $350k in credits instead of $250k. Tier 1 now offers $350k, Tier 2 offers $100k, and Tier 3 offers $10k. Workers AI credit caps are now $2,500 for Tier 3, $10,000 for Tier 2, and $50,000 for Tier 1. AI Gateway is temporarily not covered by credits. Source ↗ | HIGH |
| discovered Sep 1, 2026 · effective date unknown | Cloudflare Workers AI | The pricing has been restructured. While a free tier of 10,000 Neurons per day still exists, the pricing is now more granular and based on per-model unit pricing, billed in Neurons at $0.011 / 1,000 Neurons. Some models now require a paid plan or AI Gateway credits. Source ↗ | HIGH |
| discovered Aug 28, 2026 · effective date unknown | Deno Deploy | Egress bandwidth for the free tier is now 20GiB, down from 100 GB. KV storage remains at 1 GiB, but the free tier now includes 1,000,000 KV read units and 500,000 KV write units. CPU time is now 10 hours, down from 15 hours. Revision storage is 10 GiB. Source ↗ | HIGH |
| effective Apr 17, 2026 | Netlify | Netlify credits-based pricing updated: bandwidth now 20 credits/GB (was 10), compute now 10 credits/GB-hour (was 5), web requests 2 credits/10K (new). Same 300 credits/month allocation but each credit buys less bandwidth and compute. Source ↗ | MEDIUM |
| effective Apr 14, 2026 | Netlify | 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 ↗ | MEDIUM |
| effective Mar 30, 2026 | Google Developer Program annual subscription ending March 30. Replaced by Google AI Pro ($10/mo) and AI Ultra ($100/mo) tiers with bundled cloud credits and AI model access. Source ↗ | HIGH | |
| effective Mar 1, 2026 | Netlify | 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 ↗ | HIGH |
| effective Feb 4, 2026 | Cloudflare | Queues added to Workers free plan — message queuing now free Source ↗ | MEDIUM |
| effective Feb 1, 2026 | Vercel | 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 ↗ | MEDIUM |
| effective Jan 27, 2026 | Google Developer Program Premium merged into Google One AI Pro ($19.99/mo, includes $10 Cloud credits) and AI Ultra ($100 Cloud credits). Developer benefits now bundled into consumer AI subscriptions Source ↗ | MEDIUM | |
| effective Jan 15, 2026 | PythonAnywhere | $5 Hacker tier eliminated, features merged into free and higher tiers Source ↗ | MEDIUM |
| effective Jan 1, 2026 | Fly.io | Volume snapshots now billed — previously free automatic snapshots now cost $0.08/GB-month Source ↗ | MEDIUM |
| effective Jan 1, 2026 | Vercel | Pro plan moved to credit-based model ($20/mo credit pool), Hobby plan metrics renamed and restructured — bandwidth→Fast Data Transfer, serverless split into Active CPU + Provisioned Memory, Blob Storage and Image Transformations added Source ↗ | MEDIUM |
| effective Jan 1, 2026 | Google Cloud | Google for Startups Cloud Program now offers up to $350K GCP credits for AI-first startups, plus $10K Anthropic (Claude) partner credits via Model Garden Source ↗ | HIGH |
| effective Oct 1, 2025 | Railway | Railway expanded free tier following $100M Series B. Trial plan now includes $5 in free credits/month, sufficient for small hobby projects. Removed credit card requirement for trial Source ↗ | MEDIUM |
| effective Sep 4, 2025 | Netlify | Restructured to credit-based pricing; sites pause on credit exhaustion Source ↗ | MEDIUM |
| effective Sep 1, 2025 | Render | Free web services now spin down after 15 minutes of inactivity (previously 30 minutes). Cold starts take 30-60 seconds. Free tier remains but with faster sleep times Source ↗ | LOW |
| effective Nov 28, 2022 | Heroku | Heroku removed all free dynos, free Heroku Postgres, and free Heroku Data for Redis. The iconic PaaS that defined 'free tier' for a generation eliminated free offerings entirely after Salesforce acquisition Source ↗ | HIGH |
Cloudflare Pages for static/JAMstack (unlimited free bandwidth). Railway for full-stack apps ($5 trial credit for 30 days, no credit card). Vercel Hobby for Next.js (100 GB bandwidth, 6K build min).
Vercel Pro ($20/seat) for frontend/Next.js. Railway ($20/seat) for general-purpose backends. Google Cloud Run for container workloads with auto-scale-to-zero and generous always-free tier.
Cloudflare Workers (100K req/day free, zero cold starts, 300+ edge locations). Deno Deploy (1M req/month free). Both offer sub-millisecond cold starts and global distribution.
Cloudflare Pages (unlimited bandwidth, 500 builds/month). GitHub Pages (100 GB/month, free with any GitHub account). Vercel Hobby (100 GB bandwidth, best for Next.js).
Railway ($20/seat) or Render ($19/seat). Google Cloud Run has no per-seat pricing — purely usage-based.
Railway — closest developer experience to Heroku with better pricing ($5/mo vs Heroku's $5–7/mo minimum). Similar push-to-deploy workflow, built-in databases, and add-on ecosystem.
Compare cloud hosting pricing, search free tiers, and track pricing changes — all from your AI coding assistant.
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