Keeping it online for nothing

Free forever

No server, no database. The build is a folder of files, and every host below serves it from a CDN at no cost with no time limit. Nothing here can lapse, expire or be paused for inactivity — this is the only tier where “free forever” is literally true.

• Cloudflare PagesUnlimited bandwidth and requests on the free plan. The strongest option if a project gets popular.
• GitHub PagesFree for public repositories. Soft limits of 1GB storage and 100GB bandwidth a month.
• Netlify100GB bandwidth a month free. Deploy previews on every branch.
• Vercel HobbyBest Next.js support. Free for non-commercial use — read that clause if you ever monetise.

Free tier, metered

Almost always because an API key has to stay off the client. One small function proxies the request, and the free allowances are far beyond what a personal project uses.

• Cloudflare Workers100,000 requests a day free, and the limit resets daily rather than monthly.
• Vercel HobbyFunctions included alongside the static build. Simplest if the project is already Next.js.
• Netlify Functions125,000 invocations a month free.

Metered by invocation rather than by time, so the free tier holds indefinitely unless the project gets genuinely popular.

Free tier, sleeps when idle

Needs a database, accounts or realtime. Still free to start, and free to keep running — but this is the tier where the promise gets weaker, because free databases are the thing providers reclaim.

• SupabasePostgres, auth, storage and realtime together. Two free projects.
• TursoSQLite at the edge. A generous free tier and no inactivity pausing.
• NeonServerless Postgres. Scales to zero, which is why it stays free when idle.

Supabase pauses a free project after a week with no activity — it restores on demand, but a link you shared will be down until you wake it. If a project genuinely has to stay up unattended, either keep it on the static tier or pick a host that scales to zero instead of pausing.