← knowledge.oriz.in

Free hosting providers catalog — no-card, large-fleet picks (2026-06-22)

runbook runbookhostingfree-tierno-card-on-filecatalogcloudflarerendersupabaseneonvercelnetlify

Free hosting providers — catalog (2026-06-22)

Why this exists

The family runs on the no-card-on-file rule. Every paid line item is rejected at the signup form. This catalog answers, for each tier of the stack, which provider can host 50+ projects, free, with no card, with commercial use allowed.

Research date: 2026-06-22. Re-verify on the quarterly audit — the 2024–2026 window killed Fly.io perma-free, PlanetScale Hobby, Cyclic.sh, Glitch hosting, IDrive E2 free, and Xata free. This page is a snapshot, not a forecast.

Quick-pick — winners per need

Need Best free option (no card) Project / quota cap Card-free? Sub-file
Static sites (many) Cloudflare Pages (primary), GitHub Pages (mirror) 100 projects soft / unlimited Yes static-sites.md
Web services / containers Koyeb (1 nano always-on) OR Render (free w/ 15-min sleep) 1 / 1 Yes web-services.md
Edge functions (4-rail chain) CF Workers → Deno Deploy → Render → AWS Lambda (4th rail = user-approved exception) 100K req/day, 1M req/mo, 750h/mo, 1M req/mo Yes (Lambda card-at-signup exception) serverless-functions.md
Serverless prototype (Azure Student) Azure Functions (Student account, NOT production) 1M execs + 400K GB-s/mo Yes (student-verified) azure-student.md
Postgres DB Neon (10 projects) OR Supabase (2) OR Azure SQL free offer (10 × 32 GB lifetime, Student account) 10 / 2 / 10 Yes databases.md, azure-student.md
Document DB Firebase Firestore Spark (prod project: oriz-app; dev = Firestore Emulator) 1 GiB Yes databases.md
Edge SQL Cloudflare D1 5 GB total Yes databases.md
KV / Redis Cloudflare KV, Upstash Redis 1 GB / 256 MB Yes databases.md
Object storage Backblaze B2 (no card) OR Cloudflare R2 (card required) 10 GB / 10 GB B2: yes, R2: NO object-storage.md
Image CDN + durability (4-host replicate-everywhere) Cloudinary + ImageKit + imgbb + GitHub Releases 25 credits + 20 GB + 32 MB/img + 2 GB/asset Yes image-cdn.md
Queues / pub-sub Cloudflare Queues (2026 GA in free), Upstash QStash 10K ops/day, 1K msg/day Yes queues-pubsub.md
Uptime (45+ endpoints) oriz-status-app (custom; CF Worker + KV + Pages) — Better Stack (10 cap) is too small for the fleet 45+ Yes monitoring.md
Error tracking / logs Sentry Developer, Axiom Personal 5K errors/mo, 500 GB ingest/mo Yes monitoring.md
AI inference (see oriz-ai-providers data repo) varies Yes n/a

The 4-rail serverless fallback chain (production order)

For any critical serverless path:

1. Cloudflare Worker  (primary;     100K req/day,  10 ms CPU, edge)
2. Deno Deploy        (secondary;   1M req/mo,     50 ms CPU, edge)
3. Render Free        (tertiary;    750h/mo,       15-min sleep)
4. AWS Lambda         (quaternary;  1M req/mo,     400K GB-sec FOREVER — USER-APPROVED EXCEPTION)

AWS Lambda is admitted as a narrow exception to the no-card-on-file rule via rules/infrastructure/aws-lambda-exception.md. Lambda ONLY — no S3, EC2, RDS, DynamoDB, etc.

Possible 5th rail for prototype/learning only (NOT production): Azure Functions under the user's Azure Student account.

The DROP list (lie about being free OR died)

These appeared in earlier scoping but are out as of 2026-06-22:

Provider Reason Date killed
Fly.io Perma-free killed; now trial-only, card required after trial Oct 2024
AWS Lambda 1M req/mo is real; USER-APPROVED EXCEPTION as 4th-rail fallback per rules/infrastructure/aws-lambda-exception.md. Lambda ONLY. — (always)
AWS (everything else: S3, EC2, RDS, DynamoDB, CloudFront, etc.) Card required at signup; exception does NOT extend beyond Lambda — (always)
Google Cloud Run 2M req/mo is real but card required at GCP signup; user aggressive about not using Google — (always)
Oracle Cloud Always Free Genuinely best free compute but card required at signup; user cannot sign up for Oracle — (always)
Vercel Hobby Commercial use explicitly prohibited (incl. AdSense, donations) enforced 2025+
Cyclic.sh Shut down May 31 2024
Glitch hosting App hosting discontinued (IDE remnants only) Jul 8 2025
Deno Deploy Classic Migrate to new "Deno Deploy" platform Jul 2025
PlanetScale Hobby Free tier killed; cheapest now ~$39/mo Apr 8 2024
Xata Free Killed free tier in enterprise pivot 2025
IDrive E2 Free 10 GB free killed; trial-only now ~2023
Wasabi Trial-only (30 days), no perma-free — (always)
Bunny Optimizer 14-day trial only — (always)
Imgix 30-day trial only — (always)
Cloudflare R2 10 GB free is real but card required to activate R2 service EVALUATE not DROP
Cloudflare Pages — Vercel-like commercial limit None; Pages stays open —

Special case: Render. Their Apr 23 2026 plan reshuffle cut static-site bandwidth from 100 GB to 5 GB and capped services at 25. Render stays on the KEEP list for the rare web-service-with-sleep use case, but it's no longer competitive for static sites vs Cloudflare Pages / GitHub Pages.

Special case: Netlify. Sep 4 2025 moved Netlify Free to credit-based pricing. The credit pool is hard-capped (no surprise overages), but the model is unpredictable across a 50-project fleet. KEEP as a tertiary mirror for one or two highlight sites, not for the whole catalog.

Sub-files in this runbook

File Category Provider count
static-sites.md Static site hosting 9
web-services.md Web services / containers 7
serverless-functions.md Edge + functions (incl. AWS Lambda exception + Azure Functions) 8
databases.md Relational + document + edge SQL + KV 12
object-storage.md S3-compat + IPFS storage + GH Releases 7
image-cdn.md Image CDN + transforms + 4-host replicate-everywhere 7
queues-pubsub.md Async messaging / scheduled jobs 5
monitoring.md Uptime (custom + 3rd party) + errors + logs 6
azure-student.md Azure for Students account — student-verified, NO card —

Total: 9 sub-files, ~60 providers vetted.

How to use this catalog

  1. New service needed? Look up the category in the quick-pick table, click through to the sub-file, copy the winner's signup URL.
  2. Provider being onboarded? Confirm against the sub-file's "Card at signup?" column before you click the signup button. If the answer is YES, stop — find an alternative.
  3. Quarterly audit? Re-run each provider's free-tier page; update the "Verdict" column. The 2024–2026 window proved these tiers shift fast.
  4. Adding a provider not in the catalog? Add a row to the right sub-file. Mark verdict + cite the source URL. Bump timestamp on the changed file.

Source-of-truth links per provider

Each sub-file ends with a ## Sources section listing the official pricing page + one third-party confirmation per provider. Always trust the official page when in doubt — third-party trackers lag the killed-free-tier announcements by weeks.

Cross-links