Hosting a side project for (almost) nothing
Every host in this guide costs $5/month or less — several are free. The catch is always in the limits: daily request caps, credit pools that pause your site, or free tiers that exclude commercial projects.
These picks assume a full-stack app that is just getting its first users. For a purely static site, the free tiers are even more generous — see the static site guide.
Netlify
Free Free
Watch the credit math: deploys cost 15 credits each out of 300.
- Why it fits
- Static sites and frontend apps that deploy from Git and want a generous, mature workflow.
- How deploys work
- Connect the Git repo; pushes build and deploy automatically with previews for every pull request.
- The tradeoff
- The credit system makes bills hard to predict — traffic, deploys, and compute all drain one pool.
Vercel
Free Hobby
Personal projects only; commercial use requires Pro at $20/month.
- Why it fits
- Next.js and frontend apps where you want deploys and previews to just work.
- How deploys work
- Connect the Git repo; every push builds and deploys with a preview URL per branch.
- The tradeoff
- Usage pricing past the credit can climb fast with real traffic, especially data transfer.
- The free tier is for non-commercial projects only.
Cloudflare Workers
Free Free
Genuinely free for small sites — bandwidth is never billed.
- Why it fits
- Static sites and JS/TS apps where bandwidth costs matter or a global edge is a plus.
- How deploys work
- Deploy from Git or with the wrangler CLI; framework adapters handle SSR apps.
- The tradeoff
- More platform-specific setup than the git-push hosts — adapters, wrangler config, and Workers-flavored storage.
Ranked by ease of deploy for this stack, then by monthly cost — never by commissions. Your project isn't exactly this one? Answer four questions for a personal recommendation.