Render free tier includes Hobby plan, $0 a month plus compute… Catalogue date August 2026. Compare with 28 alternatives in Cloud Hosting.

Render Free Tier 2026 caution

Why caution: effective 2026-04-23 — Render replaced its workspace plans. Bandwidth for the Hobby tier went from 100 GB to 5 GB included per month, then $0.15 per GB, and Hobby workspaces are now capped at 25 services. New workspaces got the new plans on 2026-04-23 and existing workspaces moved on 2026-08-01. Free web services, Postgres and Key Value kept their specs, and free web services draw on the workspace's included bandwidth. Source ↗ Full history ↓

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180 days and then lapses on its own, with nothing about the vendor having changed; a standing condition — a free tier withdrawn, a product retired — does not lapse with time. This one rests on a record effective 2026-04-23, so it lapses on 2026-10-21 unless we record something new first.

Subtypes in Cloud Hosting: container_app — you deploy an app or image and the platform keeps a process running for it. We read that on 2026-08-31 from https://render.com/docs, where it says: “Run your code in just a few clicks with Render. You decide what's possible, and we'll help bring it to life.” How we use this.

Limits, pricing history, and 28 alternatives. Catalogue date August 2026. Last updated 2026-09-28.

Render's free tier offers Hobby plan, $0 a month plus compute… We rate it caution — one recorded pricing restructure, on 2026-04-23. Best for cloud hosting workloads — 28 alternatives available.

One of 61 Cloud Hosting services we track. See our full Cloud Hosting Free Tier Comparison →
Tier
Hobby
Category
Pricing Page
Catalogue date
2026-08-15
Last read
2026-09-16
The day we last read the vendor's page. Our last read of it, on 2026-09-16, found the page different from the terms we hold. We hold no confirmation of the terms we publish — the 2026-08-15 beside this date is not one we can source to a read that confirmed them.

Free Tier Details

Hobby plan, $0 a month plus compute. Free web services (512 MB RAM, 0.1 CPU) spin down after 15 minutes without traffic, with 750 free instance hours per workspace a month. One free Postgres database (256 MB RAM, 1 GB storage, 30-day expiry) and one free Key Value instance (25 MB, not continuously persisted to disk) per workspace. 5 GB bandwidth/month included then $0.15/GB; without a payment method on file, Render suspends Free services for the rest of the month instead. 500 build minutes/month. Up to 25 services, unlimited projects with 2 environments each. Pro is $25 a month plus compute.

We read that on 2026-09-16 from https://render.com/pricing, and our check recorded: the page names Render as "render". A source check reads the cited page for the service's name and a price; the limits above are from our own record.

When You'll Outgrow Render's Free Tier

Pricing Change History (3 recorded)

corrected effective 2026-09-28 low impact
Data correction - Render's plan change took effect on 2026-04-23 for new workspaces and on 2026-08-01 for existing ones, not on 2026-09-02, and it left the free web service, Postgres and Key Value terms as they were. Render's changelog dates it. Our re-read of 2026-09-02 recorded it as a change dated the day it read the page. Source ↗
Before: Recorded 2026-09-02 as pricing_restructured, dated 2026-09-02
After: pricing_restructured, dated 2026-04-23 from Render's changelog
restructured effective 2026-04-23 high impact
Render replaced its workspace plans. Bandwidth for the Hobby tier went from 100 GB to 5 GB included per month, then $0.15 per GB, and Hobby workspaces are now capped at 25 services. New workspaces got the new plans on 2026-04-23 and existing workspaces moved on 2026-08-01. Free web services, Postgres and Key Value kept their specs, and free web services draw on the workspace's included bandwidth. Source ↗
Before: Hobby: "$ 0 USD per user/month plus compute costs", "Included bandwidth 100 GB / month", "Projects & environments 1 project with 2 environments" (pricing page, capture of 2026-04-22)
After: Hobby: "Deploy up to 25 services 5 GB of bandwidth included", "Bandwidth 5 GB per month then $0.15 per GB", "Projects and environments 1 project, 2 environments" (pricing page, capture of 2026-04-29)
reduced effective 2025-09-01 low impact
Retracted — this record was our error (2026-09-28). 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 Retracted 2026-09-28: no change. Render's free-tier docs already said it spins down a free web service after 15 minutes without inbound traffic, and that spinning up takes up to a minute, on 2024-11-23 and 2025-08-10. Source ↗
Before: Free web services slept after 30 minutes of inactivity
After: Free web services sleep after 15 minutes of inactivity. 750 hours/month free compute unchanged. Cold start 30-60 seconds

View all 476 pricing changes across all vendors →

Recommended Migration Targets

These alternatives were identified from Render’s pricing changes as recommended replacements.

Recompute today's order yourself. The order above is a permutation seeded only on the UTC date and the query key — no vendor name, slug, id or offer field is an input. The list above is every one of the 3 entries in that order, not a prefix of it. The algorithm is published, so anyone can reproduce this page's order without asking us.
date
2026-09-30
query_key
curated-alternatives:Render
seed
d766e3448fcb21dcd19e97061d35f8e25cc05b31651e12cb8c4241e5bd3757be
tie_count
2

Alternatives in Cloud Hosting

How Render compares against every one of the 28 we list, not against a selection of them. A surface with room for every member of a tied set may rotate their order. A surface with room for only some of them names none of them, because which ones it named would be the claim, and a claim seeded on the date is not the one we serve tomorrow. How we decide this.

Service Free Tier Stability
Render Hobby caution
Choreo Free unrated
Railway Free stable
Qoddi Free stable
Deno Deploy Free caution
Apply.build Free stable
Vercel Hobby stable
Cloudflare Pages Free unrated
Cloudflare Workers Free stable
leapcell Free unrated
PandaStack Free caution
flightcontrol.dev Free stable
Netlify Free caution
Cloudflare Durable Objects Free stable
Google Cloud Run Always Free unrated
Val Town Free stable
Sevalla (formerly Kinsta) Free stable
surge.sh Free source unconfirmed
gigalixir.com Free stable
Neocities Free source unconfirmed
Daestro Free source unconfirmed
ampt.dev Free source unconfirmed
Northflank Free stable
Clever Cloud Free source unconfirmed
MDB GO Free source unconfirmed
dAppling Network Free source unconfirmed
GitHub Pages Free source unconfirmed
encore.dev Free stable
Fly.io Legacy Free unrated

Left out of this list: PythonAnywhere (shares no subtype with this product), anvil.works (shares no subtype with this product), codenameone.com (none of this category's subtypes apply), domcloud.co (shares no subtype with this product), WunderGraph (none of this category's subtypes apply), YepCode (none of this category's subtypes apply), Activepieces (none of this category's subtypes apply), Back4App (shares no subtype with this product), bismuth.cloud (we have not classified this record), Claw.cloud (we have not classified this record), connectycube.com (none of this category's subtypes apply), ETLR (none of this category's subtypes apply), Flutter Flow (none of this category's subtypes apply), IFTTT (none of this category's subtypes apply), Integrately (none of this category's subtypes apply), LeanCloud (shares no subtype with this product), paraio.com (shares no subtype with this product), simperium.com (shares no subtype with this product), Alwaysdata (shares no subtype with this product), Awardspace.com (shares no subtype with this product), Bubble (shares no subtype with this product), FreeFlarum (shares no subtype with this product), Oaysus (we have not classified this record), pantheon.io (shares no subtype with this product), readthedocs.org (shares no subtype with this product), Serv00.com (shares no subtype with this product), tilda.cc (shares no subtype with this product), Versoly (shares no subtype with this product), Cloudflare Sandboxes (shares no subtype with this product), Cloudflare Dynamic Workers (shares no subtype with this product), OpenVPS (we have not classified this record), Vercel Sandbox (shares no subtype with this product). Each is still listed in Cloud Hosting, with the vendor's own words we read that from on its page. How we decide this.

See full comparison →

Recompute today's order yourself. The order above is a permutation seeded only on the UTC date and the query key — no vendor name, slug, id or offer field is an input. The list above is every one of the 28 entries in that order, not a prefix of it. The algorithm is published, so anyone can reproduce this page's order without asking us.
date
2026-09-30
query_key
alternatives:Cloud Hosting:Render
seed
f1e264679a1474ed8aa5ce879b54885f6bdc37997bbde62d604ebe7366fd3776
tie_count
16

Comparisons

Alternatives Guides Featuring Render

Featured in Monthly Reports

Watch Render 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.

curl https://agentdeals.dev/api/changes?vendor=Render curl https://agentdeals.dev/pricing-changes/feed.xml?vendor=Render

API docs →

Query via MCP

Look up Render programmatically with the AgentDeals MCP server:

{ "tool": "search_deals", "arguments": { "query": "Render", "limit": 5 } }

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Render free?
Yes, Render offers a free tier: Hobby. Hobby plan, $0 a month plus compute. Free web services (512 MB RAM, 0.1 CPU) spin down after 15 minutes without traffic, with 750 free instance hours per workspace a month. One free Postgres database ...
What is Render's free tier?
Render's free tier is called "Hobby". Hobby plan, $0 a month plus compute. Free web services (512 MB RAM, 0.1 CPU) spin down after 15 minutes without traffic, with 750 free instance hours per workspace a month. One free Postgres database (256 MB RAM, 1 GB storage, 30-day expiry) and one free Key Value instance (25 MB, not continuously persisted to disk) per workspace. 5 GB bandwidth/month included then $0.15/GB; without a payment method on file, Render suspends Free services for the rest of the month instead. 500 build minutes/month. Up to 25 services, unlimited projects with 2 environments each. Pro is $25 a month plus compute.
Is Render's free tier reliable?
Render's free tier requires caution because of one specific recorded change, on 2026-04-23: Render replaced its workspace plans. Bandwidth for the Hobby tier went from 100 GB to 5 GB included per month, then $0.15 per GB, and Hobby workspaces are now capped at 25 services. New workspaces got the new plans on 2026-04-23 and existing workspaces moved on 2026-08-01. Free web services, Postgres and Key Value kept their specs, and free web services draw on the workspace's included bandwidth. Source: https://render.com/changelog/updated-plans-for-render-workspaces
Is Render's free tier good for production?
Render's free tier is usable for prototyping and development, but we rate it caution because of one recorded pricing restructure, on 2026-04-23. Consider alternatives with more stable pricing for critical services.
What changed in Render's pricing?
Render has had 1 recorded pricing change. Most recently: Render replaced its workspace plans. Bandwidth for the Hobby tier went from 100 GB to 5 GB included per month, then $0.15 per GB, and Hobby workspaces are now capped at 25 services. New workspaces got the new plans on 2026-04-23 and existing workspaces moved on 2026-08-01. Free web services, Postgres and Key Value kept their specs, and free web services draw on the workspace's included bandwidth. Source: https://render.com/changelog/updated-plans-for-render-workspaces (2026-04-23).
What are the best free alternatives to Render?
We publish no ranking of these. Nothing we record measures popularity or generosity, so naming a best or a top few would be our preference rather than our data. We hold 28 free alternatives to Render in Cloud Hosting, each listed above with its tier. Of those, 16 carry no recorded demerit and are indistinguishable under every signal we hold, so they are listed in an order that rotates daily, 11 are demoted with the reason named, 1 is listed last behind a stated gate. Our ranking rule is published at /criteria.
When will I outgrow Render's free tier?
At 1 GB storage, you'll need to upgrade. When you outgrow the free tier, evaluate paid plans against alternatives — sometimes a competitor's free tier covers what you need.
What category is Render in?
Render is categorized under Cloud Hosting on AgentDeals. We list 28 other Cloud Hosting services alongside it, every one of them on this page with its free tier and the stability we publish for it.

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