Hosting DevOps Side projects
Hobby-project hosting in 2026: what "free" actually means
"Free tier" hides three different situations: free and always-on (static front-ends), free but asleep (backends that spin down), and free as a trial (a coupon with an expiry date). Here is the map.
The short answer
Static site or portfolio: Cloudflare Pages. Unlimited bandwidth on the free tier, no sleep, no card games.
Next.js side project, non-commercial: Vercel Hobby (free). The moment the project takes money, Vercel's terms require Pro at $20 a month.
Full-stack app with a database: Railway at roughly $5-10 a month, or Render Starter at $7 plus a $6 managed database. Cheapest fixed price: a Hetzner VPS at about 6 euros a month, if you will run Docker yourself.
The $0 column, honestly
| Provider | What $0 gets you | The catch |
|---|---|---|
| Cloudflare Pages / Workers | Unlimited static requests and bandwidth; 100,000 Worker requests/day | 10ms CPU per Worker request; serverless model only, no long-running processes |
| Vercel Hobby | 100 GB bandwidth, 1M function invocations/month | Personal, non-commercial use only. Commercial project? That is Pro at $20/user/month |
| Netlify Free | 300 credits/month, custom domains with SSL, deploy previews | A production deploy costs 15 credits; if one project blows the limit, the whole account pauses |
| Render free | Free static sites; one 512 MB web service, 750 hours/month | Web services sleep after 15 idle minutes and take about a minute to wake. Fine for a demo, bad for users |
| Railway | $5 of trial credit for 30 days | Not a free tier, a coupon. After it expires you are on Hobby at $5/month plus usage |
| Fly.io | Short trial, then pay as you go (card required) | No free allowance for new users. Smallest machines run about $2/month, but you are paying from near-zero |
| Heroku | Nothing | No free tier since November 2022. Eco at $5/month still sleeps |
What a real side project costs per month
Assumes one small full-stack app with a Postgres database and low traffic, September 2026 prices:
| Setup | App | Database | Monthly total |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cloudflare Workers + D1 | $0-5 | Included in free usage | $0-5 |
| Netlify Free + serverless DB | $0 within credits | Neon/Supabase free tier | $0, then $19+ seat pricing |
| Railway Hobby | $5 plan includes $5 usage | Unmanaged Postgres template, metered | ~$5-10 |
| Render Starter | $7 fixed | Managed Postgres $6 | ~$13 |
| Vercel Pro + serverless DB | $20 Pro (commercial) | Neon/Supabase free tier | $20+ |
| Hetzner VPS + Docker + Caddy | Same box | Same-box Postgres | ~6 euros (~$7) fixed |
How to choose
- Ship a landing page this weekend: Cloudflare Pages. Free, fast, no sleep, no credit card.
- Next.js app you will iterate on: Vercel Hobby while it is personal. Budget the $20 Pro the day you charge money; do not get surprised by the terms.
- Side project with users and a database: Railway if you want git-push simplicity, Hetzner if you want the lowest fixed bill and can run Docker. Render sits between them but costs more than both for the same app.
- Things that need to never sleep: rule out every free tier that spins down (Render free, Railway trial, Replit). Pay the $5-7 or self-host.
What we could not verify
- Real cold-start times and uptime (we did not run availability probes).
- Exact current credit/meter math on usage-billed plans; these change often.
- Whether any of these hosts run public affiliate programs open to new publishers (Hostinger's program requires an existing site with 1,000+ traffic, so it is noted as a future candidate, not a current link).
Sources: vendor docs via free-tier roundups (flaviocopes.com, makerkit.dev, dev.to, bex.co), checked September-October 2026.