## The short version

For a free full-stack app with a database and no card, Ample's Free plan is the best fit: two apps running, managed databases, a hard cap. Render's free tier spins down after 15 minutes and deletes free Postgres after 30 days; Vercel Hobby and Cloudflare Workers are free for front ends and edge code; Fly.io and Heroku have no free plan.

"Free" means different things on different platforms: a trial that ends, a tier that sleeps, a plan that forbids commercial use, or an allowance that still needs a card. Here is what each platform's own documentation says, checked on October 14, 2026.

## Free plans compared

| Platform                                           | What is free                                                          | Card needed | The catch                                                                                              |
|----------------------------------------------------|----------------------------------------------------------------------|-------------|--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| [Ample](/content/pricing/index.html)           | 2 apps running at once, 2 vCPU, 2 GB memory, managed databases, 3 GB volumes, buckets | No          | Hard budget of $5 a month; an unclaimed agent account expires after 48 hours                        |
| [Render](https://render.com/docs/free.md)         | Web services with 750 instance hours a month, one Postgres, one Key Value | No          | Services spin down after 15 minutes and take about a minute to wake; free Postgres is deleted after 30 days plus 14 days' grace |
| [Railway](https://docs.railway.com/pricing/free-trial.md) | A 30-day trial with $5 of credit, then $1 of usage a month           | No          | After the trial: 0.5 GB per service, one project, no custom domain                                   |
| [Vercel](https://vercel.com/docs/plans/hobby)     | Hobby: 4 hours of Active CPU, 1M function invocations, 100 GB transfer a month | Not stated  | Personal, non-commercial use only; functions, not servers                                           |
| [Netlify](https://www.netlify.com/pricing/)       | 300 credits a month, functions, a database, Blobs                   | No          | Projects pause when credits run out; functions only                                                  |
| [Cloudflare Workers](https://developers.cloudflare.com/workers/platform/pricing/) | 100,000 requests a day, KV, D1, R2 allowances                       | No          | 10 ms of CPU per request; code must target the Workers runtime; containers need the paid plan       |
| [Google Cloud Run](https://cloud.google.com/run/pricing) | 180,000 vCPU-seconds and 2M requests a month                        | Yes         | Databases, storage and domains are separate, paid products                                           |
| [DigitalOcean App Platform](https://docs.digitalocean.com/products/app-platform/details/pricing/) | Up to 3 static sites                                                | Yes         | No free backends                                                                                     |
| [Northflank](https://northflank.com/docs/v1/application/billing/pricing-on-northflank) | Developer Sandbox: 2 services, 2 jobs, 1 addon                    | Yes         | Not for production                                                                                   |
| [Replit](https://docs.replit.com/billing/plans/starter-plan) | One published app                                                  | No          | The app goes down after 30 days; "Made with Replit" badge                                         |
| [Lovable](https://docs.lovable.dev/introduction/subscription-plans) | Daily build credits and a small Cloud grant                        | No          | No custom domains, no code download                                                                   |
| [Bolt](https://support.bolt.new/bolt-cloud/hosting/plans.md) | Hosting up to 10 GB and 333,333 requests a month                   | No          | JavaScript only; the site stops at the allowance                                                      |
| [Fly.io](https://docs.fly.io/about/free-trial)   | A trial of 2 machine-hours or 7 days                               | Yes, after the trial | No free tier for new organizations                                                                       |
| [Heroku](https://www.heroku.com/pricing)         | Nothing                                                           | Yes         | Eco dynos start at $5 a month                                                                         |

## Which free plan fits

- **A backend with a database, built by a coding agent:** Ample. Render works if a one-minute wake and a database that expires after 30 days are acceptable.
- **A static site or front end:** Vercel Hobby (non-commercial), Netlify or Cloudflare.
- **An app you built in Lovable, Replit or Bolt:** their own free plans host it with limits; export the code to [host it elsewhere](/content/compare/lovable/index.html) when it outgrows them.

## Deploy for free on Ample

```
curl -fsSL https://get.ample.computer/install.sh | sh
ample auth signup
ample plan --write && ample up
```

No card is needed. Claim the account by email within 48 hours to keep it.