Netlify is alive and still one of the easiest ways to deploy a site from Git. What changed is the bill. The Netlify pricing page now meters everything in credits: 15 per production deploy, 20 per GB of bandwidth, 10 per GB-hour of compute and 2 per 10,000 web requests. Accounts created before September 4, 2025 can stay on their legacy plans.
The free plan includes 300 credits, and the limit is hard. Twenty production deploys use it all, as do 15 GB of bandwidth. When one project goes over, all projects on the account pause until the cycle resets. The Netlify support forum has threads from users whose sites were paused with very little bandwidth used.
The picks below cover static hosting, front-end platforms with serverless functions, and full app hosts that also run databases and background workers.
Prices below are as of November 6, 2026. Our method is on How we review tools.
Quick comparison
| Tool | Best for | Price | Platforms |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cloudflare Pages and Workers | Static sites with heavy traffic on a free plan | Free; Workers Paid from $5 per month | Git deploys or Wrangler CLI |
| Vercel | Next.js and other front-end frameworks | Hobby free (non-commercial); Pro $20 per month | Git deploys or Vercel CLI |
| GitHub Pages | Docs, portfolios and open source project sites | Free | GitHub repositories |
| Render | Static sites plus APIs and Postgres in one place | Static sites free; Pro $25 per month plus compute | Git deploys, Docker |
| AWS Amplify | Teams already on AWS | Pay as you go; $0.15 per GB served | Git deploys, AWS account |
| Railway | Full-stack apps with databases and workers | Hobby $5 minimum; Pro $20 minimum | Git deploys, Docker, CLI |
| Firebase Hosting | Apps that already use Firebase auth or Firestore | Spark free; Blaze pay as you go | Firebase CLI, GitHub Actions |
Cloudflare Pages and Workers
Bandwidth is what pushes most free Netlify sites over the limit, and Cloudflare does not meter it for static files. The Workers pricing docs say requests to static assets are free and unlimited, and Pages Functions are billed as Workers. Free accounts get 100,000 function requests a day.
Pages on the free plan allows 500 builds a month, one at a time, with up to 20,000 files per site, a 25 MiB file size limit and 100 custom domains per project. The docs now carry a guide for moving Pages projects to Workers, which serves static assets and server code from the same deployment.
Best for: Static and Jamstack sites that get real traffic and would burn Netlify credits on bandwidth.
Pricing:
- Free: 500 Pages builds per month, 100,000 Workers requests per day, 10 ms CPU per invocation
- Workers Paid: $5 per month minimum, 10 million requests included, then $0.30 per million
- Pages Pro: 5,000 builds per month, 5 concurrent
Watch out for:
- Builds time out after 20 minutes and free accounts run only one build at a time, which slows busy monorepos.
Official site: Cloudflare Pages and Workers.
Vercel
Vercel is the company behind Next.js. Preview deploys per branch, edge middleware and serverless functions all behave much like Netlify's. The free Hobby plan includes 100 GB of Fast Data Transfer, 1 million edge requests, 1 million function invocations and 4 hours of active CPU a month.
Pro is $20 a month and includes $20 of usage credit. Pro offers an optional Flat Rate CDN plan instead of usage-based CDN billing, and functions bill from $0.60 per million invocations and $0.128 per hour of active CPU.
Best for: Teams building on Next.js, SvelteKit, Nuxt or Astro that want previews for every pull request.
Pricing:
- Hobby: $0 per month, personal non-commercial use
- Pro: $20 per month, includes $20 usage credit; build minutes from $0.007
- Enterprise: custom
Watch out for:
- Hobby is for personal, non-commercial use only, so a client site or a startup's landing page needs Pro.
Official site: Vercel.
GitHub Pages
Free static hosting straight from a repository. GitHub Pages builds Jekyll on its own, or you publish any static output with a GitHub Actions workflow. There are no credits to watch: sites get a soft limit of 100 GB of bandwidth a month and up to 1 GB of published files.
Custom domains and HTTPS are included. On GitHub Free, Pages works only from public repositories; private repositories need GitHub Pro, Team or Enterprise.
Best for: Project docs, personal sites and open source landing pages.
Pricing:
- Free on public repositories
- Private repository sites need GitHub Pro, Team or Enterprise (Team is $4 per user per month)
Watch out for:
- The usage limits forbid running a business on it, including e-commerce and SaaS, and there are no server functions or form handling.
Official site: GitHub Pages.
Render
Render covers what Netlify does not: long-running web services, background workers, cron jobs and managed Postgres sit next to static sites in one dashboard. The Render pricing page says static sites are always free to deploy.
Workspaces cost a flat fee plus compute. Hobby is $0 with one seat, Pro is $25 a month with unlimited seats, and the smallest paid web service is $7 a month for 512 MB of RAM. A free Postgres instance has 256 MB of RAM and 100 connections.
Best for: A front end plus an API and a database without stitching three vendors together.
Pricing:
- Hobby: $0 per month plus compute, 5 GB bandwidth
- Pro: $25 per month plus compute, 25 GB bandwidth
- Scale: $499 per month plus compute, 1 TB bandwidth
- Web service from $7 per month (512 MB RAM)
Watch out for:
- Hobby includes only 5 GB of bandwidth a month, less than Netlify's free credits buy, so a popular static site moves to Pro quickly.
Official site: Render.
AWS Amplify
Amplify Hosting is AWS's answer to Netlify: connect a Git repository and it builds, deploys and runs server-side rendering for frameworks like Next.js. It bills like the rest of AWS, by the unit, with no plan to pick.
Builds cost $0.01 a minute on the Standard machine, serving costs $0.15 per GB and SSR costs $0.30 per million requests. The free build minutes, transfer and storage belong to AWS's 12-month Free Tier. AWS accounts created since July 15, 2025 get up to $200 in credits instead.
Best for: Teams whose back end, auth and data already live in AWS.
Pricing:
- Build: $0.01 per minute (Standard)
- Data transfer out: $0.15 per GB
- Storage: $0.023 per GB-month
- SSR: $0.30 per million requests, $0.20 per GB-hour
- 12-month Free Tier: 1,000 build minutes, 15 GB served and 5 GB stored a month; accounts created since July 15, 2025 get up to $200 in credits instead
Watch out for:
- Storage is billed every month for every deployed app, and the Amplify pricing page says the charge recurs until the app is deleted. Old test apps keep costing money.
Official site: AWS Amplify.
Railway
Railway is for the moment a Netlify site grows a real back end. You deploy services, databases and volumes on one canvas, and you pay per second for the RAM and CPU they use. Its pricing page lists about $10 per GB of RAM and $20 per vCPU for a full month, plus $0.05 per GB of egress.
The Hobby plan has a $5 monthly minimum that counts as usage credit, and Pro has a $20 minimum. A 30-day trial with $5 of credit needs no card.
Best for: Full-stack apps that need Postgres, Redis or workers next to the front end.
Pricing:
- Free: trial for 30 days with $5 credit, then 1 vCPU and 0.5 GB RAM per service
- Hobby: $5 minimum per month, includes $5 usage
- Pro: $20 minimum per month, includes $20 usage
- Enterprise: custom
Watch out for:
- Costs follow usage, so an app with a memory leak or a busy worker can run past the minimum. After the trial, the Railway pricing page limits free accounts to one project and three services.
Official site: Railway.
Firebase Hosting
If your app already uses Firebase Authentication or Firestore, hosting it on Firebase keeps one console and one CLI. Deploys go out through the Firebase CLI, and preview channels give a branch or pull request its own temporary URL.
The free Spark plan includes 10 GB of storage and 360 MB of data transfer a day, roughly 10 GB a month. On Blaze, storage is $0.026 per GB and transfer $0.15 per GB beyond those amounts.
Best for: Single-page apps built on Firebase services.
Pricing:
- Spark: free, 10 GB storage, 360 MB transfer per day
- Blaze: $0.026 per GB stored and $0.15 per GB transferred beyond the free amounts
Watch out for:
- Server code needs Cloud Functions, which the Firebase pricing page lists only under the paid Blaze plan.
Official site: Firebase Hosting.
How to choose
| If you need | Pick |
|---|---|
| A free static site that gets a lot of traffic | Cloudflare Pages and Workers |
| First-class Next.js support and branch previews | Vercel |
| Docs or a portfolio from a public repo | GitHub Pages |
| Static site, API and Postgres under one bill | Render |
| Hosting inside an existing AWS account | AWS Amplify |
| Databases and background workers next to the front end | Railway |
| An app already built on Firebase Auth or Firestore | Firebase Hosting |
When to stay with Netlify
Stay on Netlify if you are on a legacy plan from before September 4, 2025, since you can keep it unchanged. Forms, deploy previews and functions all live in one dashboard, and Pro's 3,000 monthly credits buy 200 production deploys or 150 GB of bandwidth. If you are on the new free plan, deploy less often by batching changes, because each production deploy costs 15 of your 300 credits.
Frequently asked questions
Is Netlify still free?
Yes, with 300 credits a month on the free plan. That covers small sites, but the limit cannot be exceeded and paid usage is not possible on it, so sites pause instead. Netlify sends warnings at 50%, 75% and 100% of usage.
What is the best free alternative to Netlify?
For static sites, Cloudflare Pages, because static file traffic is not metered. For a personal Next.js project, Vercel Hobby. For project docs on GitHub, GitHub Pages.
How many credits does a Netlify deploy use?
A production deploy uses 15 credits. Bandwidth costs 20 credits per GB, compute 10 credits per GB-hour and web requests 2 credits per 10,000. Extra credits cost $5 for 500 on Personal and $10 for 1,500 on Pro.
Is Vercel better than Netlify?
For Next.js apps, usually, since Vercel builds the framework. On free plans the limits differ: Vercel Hobby forbids commercial use, while Netlify Free stops at 300 credits and pauses your sites. Both charge $20 a month at the Pro level.
