Free tiers & pricing
What you get for free, what it costs when you outgrow it, and the catches. Every figure is taken from the vendor's official pricing or docs page and dated. Last full check: 17 Oct 2026.
Prices are in USD and exclude tax. Where we couldn't confirm something on an official page, we say unverified rather than guess. Spotted a change? That's what the newsletter is for.
Hosting
| Host | Free tier | Static / SSR / Servers | Paid from | Commercial use on free | Last checked |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Vercel Frontend + serverless platform | Free tier Hobby: $0 — 100 GB data transfer, 1M CDN requests, 1M function invocations / month | Yes / Yes / No | $20/mo Pro: $20/month per developer seat, includes $20 of usage credit; 1 TB transfer, 10M CDN requests | No | 17 Oct 2026 (opens in a new tab) |
| Netlify Frontend platform (credit-based) | Free tier Free: $0 forever — 300 credits/month | Yes / Yes / No | $9/mo Personal: $9/month, 1,000 credits. Pro: $20/month, 3,000 credits, unlimited members | Unverified | 17 Oct 2026 (opens in a new tab) |
| Cloudflare Pages Static + edge platform | Free tier Free: unlimited sites, seats, requests and bandwidth for static assets | Yes / Yes / No | $5/mo Workers Paid: $5/month minimum per account — 10M requests/month included, then $0.30 per extra million. Static asset requests stay free. | Unverified | 17 Oct 2026 (opens in a new tab) |
| Railway Usage-based app platform (containers) | Limited free Free Trial: $5 one-time credit for 30 days; then Free plan with $1/month of usage | Yes / Yes / Yes | $5/mo Hobby: $5/month including $5 of usage, 2 custom domains, 50 projects. Pro: $20/month per workspace | Unverified | 17 Oct 2026 (opens in a new tab) |
| Render App platform (static, web services, Postgres) | Free tier Hobby workspace $0: free static sites + free 512 MB web service that sleeps after 15 min idle | Yes / Yes / Yes | $7/mo Paid compute from $7/month (0.5 CPU, 512 MB). Pro workspace: $25/month + compute | Unverified | 17 Oct 2026 (opens in a new tab) |
| Fly.io VMs / containers close to users | Trial only No free tier — free trial of 2 VM hours or 7 days, whichever comes first | Yes / Yes / Yes | ≈$2.19/mo Pay-as-you-go: shared-cpu-1x · 256 MB is $2.19/month in Ashburn (iad); region multipliers apply. Managed Postgres from $38/month | n/a | 17 Oct 2026 (opens in a new tab) |
| DigitalOcean App Platform Managed PaaS (static + containers) | Free tier Free: 3 static-site apps, 1 GiB outbound transfer per app per month | Yes / Yes / Yes | $5/mo Containers from $5/month (1 shared vCPU, 512 MiB, 50 GiB transfer). Dev database $7/month | Unverified | 17 Oct 2026 (opens in a new tab) |
| Hostinger Managed web hosting (shared / cloud) | No free tier No free tier — prepaid plans with a 30-day money-back guarantee | Yes / Yes / Yes | $2.99/mo Promotional rate on a 48-month prepay; renewal $10.99/month. Business plan price: unverified (not clearly labelled on the page we checked) | n/a | 17 Oct 2026 (opens in a new tab) |
Databases
| Service | Free tier | Paid from | Watch out for | Last checked |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Supabase (opens in a new tab) Postgres + auth + storage + realtime | Free tier Free: 500 MB database, 50,000 MAU, 5 GB egress, 1 GB file storage, 2 active projects | $25/mo Pro: from $25/month incl. $10 compute credit (one Micro instance), 8 GB disk, 100,000 MAU, 250 GB egress, daily backups. Spend cap on by default | Free projects pause after a week with no activity — fine for demos, risky for a live product. | 17 Oct 2026 (opens in a new tab) |
| Neon (opens in a new tab) Serverless Postgres (scale to zero) | Free tier Free: 100 projects, 100 CU-hours per project/month, 1 GB storage per project (20 GB total) | Usage-based, no minimum Launch: $0.106 per CU-hour, $0.35/GB-month storage, no monthly minimum (invoices under $0.50 aren't collected) | Running out of CU-hours or egress on Free suspends compute until the next month; exceeding storage blocks writes. | 17 Oct 2026 (opens in a new tab) |
| Firebase (Firestore) (opens in a new tab) NoSQL document database + Google backend services | Free tier Spark (no-cost): Firestore 1 GiB stored, 50K reads/day, 20K writes/day, 10 GiB egress/month | Pay as you go Blaze: pay-as-you-go at Google Cloud rates; the Spark no-cost usage is still included | Daily quotas reset at midnight; Firestore is NoSQL, so SQL-shaped apps from Lovable/Bolt don't port over directly. | 17 Oct 2026 (opens in a new tab) |
| Turso (opens in a new tab) SQLite-compatible (libSQL) database | Free tier Free: 100 databases, 5 GB storage, 500M rows read and 10M rows written per month | $4.99/mo Developer: $4.99/month — 9 GB storage, 2.5B rows read, 25M rows written, 3-day restore | SQLite dialect: not a drop-in replacement for the Postgres that Lovable/Bolt/Supabase projects expect. | 17 Oct 2026 (opens in a new tab) |
Authentication
| Service | Free tier | Paid from | Watch out for | Last checked |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Supabase Auth (opens in a new tab) Apps already on Supabase (Lovable, Bolt) — users live in your own Postgres | Free tier Free: 50,000 MAU, social OAuth, anonymous sign-ins, basic MFA | $25/mo Included in Supabase Pro ($25/month): 100,000 MAU, then $0.00325 per MAU | Add every production and preview URL to Authentication → URL Configuration, or logins bounce to localhost. | 17 Oct 2026 (opens in a new tab) |
| Clerk (opens in a new tab) Polished drop-in sign-in UI for React/Next.js apps built in Cursor, Claude Code, v0 | Free tier Hobby: free — 50,000 monthly retained users per app, up to 3 social connections | $25/mo Pro: $25/month ($20/month billed annually); 50,000 MRU included then $0.02 each; MFA, passkeys, remove branding | Production needs your own domain (DNS records) and production keys (pk_live_ / sk_live_). | 17 Oct 2026 (opens in a new tab) |
| Firebase Authentication (opens in a new tab) Apps on Firebase/Firestore, Google sign-in heavy apps | Free tier Spark: email/social sign-in at no cost; 50K MAU with Identity Platform | Pay as you go Blaze: beyond 50K MAU (Identity Platform) Google Cloud pricing applies; SMS billed per message | Every domain you serve the app from must be listed under Authentication → Settings → Authorized domains. | 17 Oct 2026 (opens in a new tab) |
Free-tier details
Vercel
- 100 GB/month Fast Data Transfer, 1M CDN requests/month
- 1M function invocations, 4 hours Active CPU, 360 GB-hrs memory / month
- Hobby is for personal, non-commercial use only
- Hobby accounts are capped at the free limits — you can't buy extra usage
Netlify
- 300 credits/month. Production deploy = 15 credits, bandwidth = 20 credits/GB, compute = 10 credits/GB-hour, web requests = 2 credits per 10k
- Custom domains with SSL, unlimited deploy previews, functions, global CDN
- Rough math (ours): 300 credits ≈ 20 production deploys, or ≈ 15 GB of bandwidth, in a month — not both
Cloudflare Pages
- Unlimited sites, seats, requests and bandwidth (static assets)
- 500 builds/month, 1 build at a time, 20-minute build timeout
- Up to 20,000 files per site, 25 MiB max per file, 100 custom domains per project
- Server code (Pages Functions) counts against Workers Free: 100,000 requests/day
Railway
- Free Trial: $5 one-time credit, valid 30 days, no credit card required
- Free plan: $0 with $1/month usage credit, 1 project, 3 services, 1 vCPU / 0.5 GB per service
- Free plan: 0 custom domains (Trial: 1)
- Usage: ≈$10 per GB RAM/month, ≈$20 per vCPU/month, egress $0.05/GB (billed per second)
Render
- Static sites are free; Hobby workspace includes 5 GB bandwidth/month (then $0.15/GB) and 500 build minutes
- Free web service: 512 MB RAM, spins down after 15 minutes without traffic, ~1 minute to wake up
- 750 free instance hours per workspace per month
- Free Postgres: 1 GB, expires 30 days after creation (14-day grace period to upgrade)
Fly.io
- Trial: 2 total VM hours, up to 10 machines, 20 GB volumes; apps stop when it runs out
- Billed per second while a machine runs
- Smallest preset shared-cpu-1x 256 MB: $2.19/month (Ashburn; other regions cost more)
DigitalOcean App Platform
- 3 apps with static sites free; extra static-only apps $3/month each
- 1 GiB outbound transfer per free app, then $0.02/GiB
- Custom domain, automatic HTTPS, global CDN included
Hostinger
- Premium web hosting: $2.99/month on a 48-month prepay ($143.52 upfront), renews at $10.99/month
- Free domain for 1 year on plans paid yearly or longer (not on Single)
- Node.js web apps (GitHub deploys, React/Vite/Next.js) need Business or Cloud plans
- Cloud Startup: $7.99/month on 48-month prepay, renews at $25.99/month
Supabase
- 500 MB database per project (shared CPU, 500 MB RAM)
- 50,000 monthly active users for Auth
- 5 GB egress + 5 GB cached egress, 1 GB file storage, 500,000 Edge Function invocations
- Free projects pause after 1 week of inactivity; limit of 2 active projects
Neon
- 100 projects, 10 branches per project
- 100 CU-hours of compute per project per month, autoscaling up to 2 CU; suspends after 5 minutes idle
- 1 GB Postgres storage per project, 20 GB across the account
- 5 GB public egress per project; Auth up to 60k MAU
Firebase (Firestore)
- Cloud Firestore: 1 GiB stored, 50K document reads/day, 20K writes/day, 20K deletes/day, 10 GiB egress/month
- Firebase Hosting: 10 GB storage, 360 MB/day transfer
- No payment method needed on Spark
Turso
- 100 databases, 5 GB total storage
- 500 million rows read, 10 million rows written per month
- 3 GB monthly syncs, 1-day point-in-time restore
Supabase Auth
- 50,000 monthly active users included on the Free plan
- Social OAuth providers, custom SMTP server and basic MFA included
- Supabase branding on auth emails on Free (removed on Pro)
Clerk
- 50,000 monthly retained users (MRU) per app; users who never return after day one aren't counted
- Prebuilt sign-in/sign-up/profile UI, custom domain, up to 3 social connections
- Clerk branding shown; session lifetime fixed at 7 days; no MFA on Hobby
Firebase Authentication
- Standard Authentication services are no-cost on Spark and Blaze
- With Identity Platform: 50K MAU no-cost (50 MAU for SAML/OIDC)
- Phone (SMS) auth needs a Cloud Billing account and is billed per SMS
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