Free Hosting for Startups
The jump from free to the first bill on 8 platforms, and what forces it
Cloudflare stays free the longest for a startup whose app fits in Workers and static assets: custom domains, previews and extra people cost nothing, and the first bill is usually a $5 Postgres database. Light Cloud's first bill is also $5, and that $5 covers your own domain, the database and an API in any language, all in. Railway's step is $5 plus usage, Netlify's $9, and Vercel's is $20 per founder the day you take a payment.
We make Light Cloud, the second row below. It isn't first here, and the method explains why.
How we ranked
Every free plan ends the same way: the startup needs something the plan doesn't include. So this ranking asks two questions per platform. What forces the first bill, and how big is it?
The reference startup is small and ordinary: a frontend, one API, a PostgreSQL database and its own domain, with one founder deploying and about 1,000 API requests a day. Each price is the first monthly bill once the free plan no longer covers that stack, from each vendor's own pricing and docs pages, checked on 2026-10-13, in US dollars. Ties go to the platform whose free plan lasts longer before the bill arrives.
A third column covers the moment a co-founder starts deploying, because that is the second bill most startups meet. Commercial use matters too: one platform's free plan bans it outright, and it changes the answer for that row.
The ranking
1. Cloudflare
Best for: startups whose app fits in Workers and static assets.
Cloudflare's free plan is the most generous here if your code runs as a Worker. Workers Free allows 100,000 requests a day, static asset requests are free and unlimited, and a Pages project gets 100 custom domains and unlimited preview deployments on the free plan (limits). Cloudflare also says a Pages site can be managed by an unlimited number of users, so the co-founder costs nothing.
The first bill usually comes from the database. Cloudflare's own D1 is SQLite, not Postgres; since 2026-06-18 you can create a PlanetScale Postgres database billed on your Cloudflare invoice, and PlanetScale's single node starts at $5 a month. If D1 is enough for you, the bill stays at $0 for a long time.
The limits are real, though. A Worker gets 10 ms of CPU per request on the free plan, and past 100,000 requests a day requests fail with Error 1027 until midnight UTC (limits). Running a container needs Workers Paid, a $5 minimum. And Cloudflare's budget alerts only notify; they never cap spend.
2. Light Cloud
Best for: the smallest first bill that covers a container API in any language, Postgres and your domain.
Free costs $0 with no card: unlimited static sites, 3 server apps and a preview URL for every branch, with $1 of usage a month (pricing). It never bills you. When the $1 runs out, server apps pause until next month and static sites keep serving. The catch for a startup is plain: Free has no custom domain and no databases, and free pages carry a small "by Light Cloud" link.
So the first bill comes early, the day you point your own domain at the app or create a database, and it is Lite at $5 a month. That $5 includes $5 of usage, a custom domain with automatic SSL and one shared PostgreSQL database. The reference startup uses about $4.25 of it: $4 for the database, about 20 cents for the API and a few cents of builds. Your API can be Node, Python, Go, Java or .NET, from git push deploys or a Dockerfile.
Where it falls behind in this ranking: the second bill. Lite has one team member, so a co-founder who deploys means Starter at $19 a month. There are no cron jobs, workers or private networking, the shared database runs in Belgium only, and a scaled-to-zero API takes 3.1 to 3.7 seconds to answer its first request after a quiet spell.
3. Railway
Best for: a $5 first step with cron jobs and private networking built in.
After a 30-day trial with $5 of credit, Railway's Free plan gives $1 of credit a month, one project, three services and no custom domains (free trial docs). No card is needed. The first bill comes with your own domain or a second project: Hobby at $5 a month, with $5 of usage included (plans). Postgres is billed as usage like any other service.
Railway has extras we don't: cron jobs, private networking and pull request environments on every plan. Against it: Hobby is a single-developer workspace, and Railway recommends Pro, $20 a month, for commercial applications, which a startup with paying customers is.
4. Google Cloud Run
Best for: teams already in Google Cloud.
The compute is free for a long time. Cloud Run's free tier covers 180,000 vCPU-seconds and 2 million requests a month (pricing), far more than the reference API needs. But you need a billing account with a card to use it, and anything over the free tier is billed, not paused.
The database is the first bill: Cloud SQL's smallest shared-core instance is $0.0105 an hour, about $8 a month before storage (Cloud SQL pricing). Your own domain takes setup, because Cloud Run's domain mapping is in preview and Google calls it not production-ready. Since 2026-10-12, a spend cap can pause Cloud Run at a budget. People are managed through IAM, with no seat fee.
5. Netlify
Best for: frontend-heavy startups.
Netlify's free plan covers a lot of the reference startup: custom domains with SSL, functions, unlimited deploy previews and Netlify Database, a managed Postgres (plans). It is never billed. But it runs on 300 credits a month, and each production deploy costs 15 of them, so about 20 deploys use the lot. When credits run out, every project on the team pauses until next month.
The first bill is Personal at $9 for 1,000 credits. A co-founder can't join Free or Personal at all; Netlify's pricing page says those plans cannot add team member seats, so the second step is Pro at $20 a month with unlimited members. Password protection is a Pro feature too.
6. DigitalOcean App Platform
Best for: fixed monthly prices from the first bill.
The free tier is three static sites (pricing). Any backend is paid, and you need a payment method to create anything at all, even a free static site. The reference startup is a $5 container (512 MiB) plus a $7 development database: $12. There is no seat fee as the team grows.
The development database has no backups by default and is deleted with the app, so a real product moves to managed Postgres at about $15 soon after.
7. Render
Best for: predictable per-service prices.
Render's free tier needs no card and includes free web services and a free Postgres database (free tier docs). Two things force the first bill. Free web services spin down after 15 minutes without traffic and take about a minute to wake, and the free database expires 30 days after it is created. A Starter web service is $7 and the smallest Postgres $6 plus $0.30 per GB: $13.30.
The free workspace has one team member. A co-founder means the Pro workspace, $25 a month flat with unlimited seats, plus compute.
8. Vercel
Best for: Next.js startups that will pay per founder from the first payment.
Vercel's free Hobby plan is generous and includes custom domains, but its fair use guidelines restrict it to non-commercial personal use, and count a paid developer or taking payments as commercial. For a startup that is the trigger, whatever the traffic. Pro is $20 a month per deploying seat with $20 of usage included (Pro plan), and Postgres comes from a Marketplace partner, billed by them. Two founders deploying is $40.
Where the others beat us
Cloudflare beats us outright on staying free: your own domain, previews and a co-founder all cost nothing there, while our Free plan has no custom domain at all. If your app is JavaScript and fits in a Worker, start there. Netlify's free plan includes a custom domain and a database, which ours doesn't. Railway's $5 buys cron jobs and private networking we don't have. And DigitalOcean, Cloud Run and Cloudflare never charge for a second person, while our Lite plan stops at one.
Where we come out ahead is the shape of the first step. It is $5, it covers a container in whatever language the API is written in, a database and your domain on one invoice, and nothing on the free plan can ever bill you. If that's your startup's stack, our free hosting for startups turns into a $5 bill the day you need more, with a Postgres database ready in seconds included. A password on staging stays free on every plan; the staging tutorial takes five minutes. For the full monthly picture after launch, see where to host a SaaS app.
Which limit hit your startup first: the domain, the database or the second person?
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