Free Heroku Alternatives in 2026: 10 Hosts Checked for Real Free Limits and Card Rules

Heroku ended its free dynos on November 28, 2022, and the search for a replacement has not stopped. The trouble is that most "free Heroku alternative" lists were written in 2022 and still repeat the old promises. Some of those hosts have since dropped their free plan, added a card requirement, or turned it into a one time credit.

I checked ten hosting and PaaS platforms against their current pricing and docs pages and sorted them by what you get without paying. Limits move often, so treat the numbers as a snapshot from October 2026 and confirm in your own dashboard before you deploy anything you care about.

The short answer

• Free web services, no card: Render (sleeps after 15 minutes), Cloady (small always-on workspace), Northflank (2 always-on services).
• Free serverless, no card: Deno Deploy (1M requests a month) and Cloudflare Pages (500 builds a month).
• Free credit with a card: Railway ($5 one time, then $1 a month).
• Frontend hosts with a catch: Netlify pauses every site when credits run out, and Vercel Hobby is non-commercial.
• No free plan for new accounts: Fly.io (7 day trial) and Koyeb (no free web service listed).

Free hosts that do not ask for a card

Render

Render is the closest thing to the old Heroku free dyno. Static sites are always free. Free web services get 750 instance hours per workspace each month, and they spin down after 15 minutes without traffic. The next request waits about a minute while the service starts, and Reddit posters report 30 seconds or more for heavier Node apps. Spun-down services do not use your hours.

The free Postgres is a trial, not a database you can keep. It holds 1 GB, there is one per workspace, it has no backups, and it expires 30 days after creation. You then get 14 days to upgrade before Render deletes it. Free Key Value is in memory only, so a restart wipes it. Free web services also block outbound ports 25, 465 and 587, so an app that sends email over SMTP needs an HTTP email API instead. See Render or visit render.com.

Cloady

Cloady gives you a free workspace as long as every app in it fits 0.5 vCPU, 1 GB of RAM and 5 GB of SSD, with 200 GB of traffic. No card is needed to start, and the allowance is not time limited. A card is only requested when a deploy would pass the limit.

The catch is the cliff. If any one resource goes over, the whole workspace becomes billable, not just the excess, and Small starts at $6 a month. A database plus an app will use a lot of 1 GB of RAM, so size things before you deploy. It is also a young platform with a small user base. See Cloady or visit cloady.com.

Northflank

The free Sandbox gives you 2 services, 1 database and 2 cron jobs, and the pricing page says services stay always on with no sleeping. That is rare among free hosts. Custom domains, SSL, Git builds and Dockerfiles are included. Support is best effort, and the platform is aimed at developers who are comfortable with Dockerfiles and vCPUs. Note that Capterra lists no free version, which conflicts with Northflank's own page, so check the Sandbox is still offered when you sign up. See Northflank or visit northflank.com.

Deno Deploy

Free is a permanent $0 plan with 1 million requests, 20 GiB of egress, 10 apps and 5 custom domains a month, plus a KV store with 1 GiB of storage. The number to watch is active CPU: Free includes only 10 hours a month. Idle apps scale to zero after about 20 to 30 seconds, so the first request after a quiet period can be slow. Pro is $20 a month. The pricing page also shows a banner saying Deno is joining Cloudflare, with no details yet, so check it before a long-term commitment. See Deno Deploy or visit deno.com/deploy.

Cloudflare Pages

Free allows 500 builds a month, one build at a time, 100 projects per account, 20,000 files per site and 25 MiB per file. It is the best fit for static sites and front ends. A server rendered or API heavy app is different: Pages Functions count toward your Workers quota, which on Workers Free is 100,000 requests a day. Forum commenters claim free unlimited bandwidth, but the limits page does not state it, so do not plan around it for a dynamic site. See Cloudflare Pages or visit pages.cloudflare.com.

Free credit, but you need a card

Railway

New Trial accounts get a one time $5 grant. After that the Free plan gives $1 of credit a month with 1 replica, 0.5 GB of RAM and 1 vCPU, enough for one small app. Hobby is $5 a month with $5 of usage included, and Pro is $20 with $20 included. If you pay with credits and the balance hits zero, the subscription is cancelled and every workload stops. G2 reviewers like the deploy flow but say costs get hard to predict as a project grows, and several Trustpilot reviewers report workspaces restricted without a stated reason. Old advice that Railway is free is out of date. See Railway or visit railway.com.

Frontend hosts with a catch

Netlify

Free is $0 with 300 credits a month. A production deploy costs 15 credits, bandwidth costs 20 credits per GB and 10,000 web requests cost 2. When the credits run out, every web project on the team is paused, visitors see a "Site not available" page, and you cannot deploy until the next cycle or an upgrade. Netlify emails you at 50%, 75% and 100% of your credits, so turn those on. See Netlify or visit netlify.com.

Vercel

Hobby is $0 and includes 1M CDN requests, 100 GB of Fast Data Transfer and 1M function invocations a month. It is for personal, non-commercial use only. If the project earns money, the pricing FAQ says you need Pro at $20 a month plus $20 per developer seat. Hobby accounts cannot buy extra usage, so you will not be billed by accident, but I could not confirm what happens at a cap. See Vercel or visit vercel.com.

No longer free for new accounts

Fly.io

New organizations get no free plan. You get a trial of up to 2 hours of Machine runtime or 7 days, whichever ends first, with no card to start and a card required after. The smallest always-on Machine, a shared-cpu-1x with 256 MB, lists at $2.19 for 30 days. Watch the extras: volumes cost $0.15 per GB a month even when detached, a dedicated IPv4 is $2 a month, and egress is $0.02 per GB in North America and Europe. Trustpilot reviews mention surprise charges, so set billing alerts. See Fly.io or visit fly.io.

Koyeb

The pricing page I read lists no free web service plan. Pro is $29 a month with $10 of included compute, and the one free item is a small serverless Postgres instance with 0.25 vCPU, 1 GB of RAM and 1 GB of storage. Older reviews mention a free tier, and five of nine recent Trustpilot reviews describe accounts blocked or held for identity verification, so test sign-up before you build on it. Koyeb is also joining Mistral AI, and the page does not say what changes. See Koyeb or visit koyeb.com.

Card requirements at a glance

• No card needed: Render, Cloady, Northflank, Deno Deploy, Cloudflare Pages, Netlify and Vercel.
• Card required: Railway, Fly.io (after the trial) and Koyeb.

No card does not mean no bill. Cloady bills the whole workspace once one resource crosses its limit, and Vercel Hobby cannot be used for a commercial project at all.

Which one should you pick?

• A backend API with a Postgres database: Render, as long as you accept the 30 day database and the cold start. Northflank if you need an always-on service.
• A side project you want always on: Northflank or Cloady.
• A static site or front end: Cloudflare Pages. Use Netlify only with usage alerts turned on, and Vercel only for non-commercial work.
• Edge functions in TypeScript: Deno Deploy, watching the 10 hour CPU limit.
• Something that must not sleep or pause and you can pay a little: Railway on Hobby, or Fly.io with billing alerts.

FAQ

Is there still a free Heroku?

No. Heroku removed its free dynos and free Postgres on November 28, 2022. The hosts above are the nearest replacements, and none of them match all of it for free.

What is the best free Heroku alternative with no credit card?

Render for the most Heroku-like workflow, with the trade-offs that web services sleep after 15 minutes and the free Postgres expires after 30 days. Northflank if you need a service that stays on.

Which free hosts do not sleep?

Northflank says its free services stay always on. Cloady's free workspace is not described as sleeping, but I did not find an explicit statement, so test it. Render, Deno Deploy and Cloudflare Pages Functions all scale to zero or spin down when idle.

Can I run a commercial project on a free plan?

Vercel Hobby says no. For the others, I did not find clear commercial use terms on the pages I read, so check each provider's terms before you charge customers.

How can I tell if a free tier is going to cost me?

Each SaaS Puppy tool page puts "The Catch" in a yellow box at the top, along with the card rule and the exact quotas.