Hosting & Compute

Posted on Apr 24, 2026

All figures and plan details below are as of 2026-04 (unless stated otherwise).

AWS (Amazon Web Services)

AWS Free Tier includes 12 months free for many services plus a set of Always Free offers: AWS Free Tier.

  • Great for trying common building blocks (compute, storage, databases, serverless) with clear per-service limits.
  • Typically requires a credit card for signup.

Google Cloud Platform (GCP)

GCP offers Always Free products plus a free trial credit for new users: Google Cloud Free Program.

  • Useful for Cloud Run/serverless, managed databases, and data/AI services (limits vary per product).
  • Typically requires a credit card for signup.

Azure

Azure Free Account includes $200 credit for 30 days, 20+ popular services free for 12 months, and 65+ always-free services: Azure free account

Oracle

  • Oracle always free resources: Provision VMs, Oracle Autonomous Database, and networking. Details of the Always Free Resources.
  • Oracle free trial provides $300 USD of cloud credits valid for up to 30 days. Oracle free trial.

Heroku

  • Heroku for GitHub Students offers $13/month in platform credits for 24 months (total $312) to eligible GitHub Student Developer Pack members: Heroku GitHub Students

Vercel

Ideal for front-end frameworks and serverless functions.

  • Unlimited projects: Deploy as many projects as you want.
  • Global CDN and Edge functions included.

Netlify

Netlify focus is on static site hosting and serverless functions.

Render

Unified cloud platform for hosting web apps, APIs, and databases.

  • Free web services: Supports Node.js, Python, Ruby, Go, etc.
  • 750 free instance hours per month.

Alibaba

IBM