---
title: "Free Hosting for AI Apps in 2026: Vercel, Cloudflare, Hugging Face Spaces, Render, Fly.io, Cloud Run"
slug: "free-hosting-ai-apps"
description: "Free hosting for AI apps checked 2026-10-28: Vercel Hobby, Cloudflare Workers, Workers AI, Hugging Face Spaces, Render, Fly.io, Cloud Run. Limits and sources."
published: "2026-10-28"
updated: "2026-10-28"
verifiedAt: "2026-10-28"
canonical: "https://aifree.dev/learn/free-hosting-ai-apps"
---

# Free Hosting for AI Apps in 2026: Vercel, Cloudflare, Hugging Face Spaces, Render, Fly.io, Cloud Run

> Free hosting for AI apps checked 2026-10-28: Vercel Hobby, Cloudflare Workers, Workers AI, Hugging Face Spaces, Render, Fly.io, Cloud Run. Limits and sources.

- Time: 15 minutes: pick a host, deploy a small app, check the usage page
- You need: An app that talks to a hosted LLM API (an API key kept as a server-side secret), or a small model you serve yourself; A Git repository for hosts that deploy on push; A card for Google Cloud Run and for Fly.io after its trial; for the others read the sign-up page, as the pricing pages often do not say
- Last checked: 2026-10-28

An AI app is usually a thin web app: a page, a server route that holds your API key, and calls to a model hosted by someone else. That needs little compute, so a free host can carry it, as long as you know what the free plan stops you from doing. Free plans differ most in three places: whether the app may earn money, whether it sleeps when idle, and how long one request may run (LLM calls are slow). Everything below was read on each vendor's pricing or docs page on 2026-10-28.

## Free hosting limits side by side

| Host | What is free | Idle behaviour | Main limits | Checked |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| [Vercel Hobby](https://vercel.com/docs/plans/hobby) | Free plan: 100 GB fast data transfer, 1,000,000 function invocations, 4 CPU-hours a month | No sleep; over a limit you wait about 30 days | **Non-commercial, personal use only**; functions run up to 300 s; 100 deployments a day | 2026-10-28 |
| [Cloudflare Workers](https://developers.cloudflare.com/workers/platform/pricing/) | 100,000 requests a day; static asset requests free and unlimited | No sleep stated | 10 ms of CPU time per invocation (waiting for an API does not count as CPU) | 2026-10-28 |
| [Cloudflare Workers AI](https://developers.cloudflare.com/workers-ai/platform/pricing/) | 10,000 Neurons a day, on the free and paid plans | Resets daily at 00:00 UTC | Neurons are a unit that differs by model; beyond 10,000 the Free plan stops, paid is $0.011 per 1,000 | 2026-10-28 |
| [Hugging Face Spaces](https://huggingface.co/docs/hub/spaces-overview) | Static Spaces free for everyone; CPU Basic (2 vCPU, 16 GB RAM) is the free hardware | Free hardware goes to sleep when unused | **Creating a Gradio or Docker Space needs a paid plan**; free accounts get up to 2 Gradio Spaces on ZeroGPU; disk is not persistent | 2026-10-28 |
| [Render](https://render.com/docs/free) | Free web service with 750 instance hours a month; static sites free | Spins down after 15 minutes without traffic; waking takes about a minute | One instance, no persistent disk; free Postgres expires after 30 days | 2026-10-28 |
| [Fly.io](https://docs.fly.io/about/pricing) | No free tier for new organizations; a trial of up to 2 hours of Machine runtime or 7 days | n/a | Card needed after the trial; pay as you go | 2026-10-28 |
| [Google Cloud Run](https://cloud.google.com/run/pricing) | Each month: 180,000 vCPU-seconds, 360,000 GiB-seconds, 2 million requests, 1 GiB outbound data in North America (request-based billing, us-central1) | Scales to zero | A billing account is needed; use beyond the free amount is charged | 2026-10-28 |
| [Netlify](https://www.netlify.com/pricing/) | Free plan, "300 credit limit" | Not stated | The pricing page does not say what happens when credits run out; see the [offer page](https://aifree.dev/offer/netlify-free-plan) | 2026-10-28 |
| [Deno Deploy](https://deno.com/deploy/pricing) | 1M requests, 20 GiB egress and 10 hours of active CPU a month, 10 apps | Billed only while code runs | The page does not say whether a card is needed | 2026-10-28 |
| [Railway](https://railway.com/pricing) | $5 one-time trial credit (30 days, no card), then $1 of usage a month | n/a | Free plan: 1 vCPU and 0.5 GB per service, 3 services, 1 project | 2026-10-28 |
| [GitHub Pages](https://docs.github.com/en/pages/getting-started-with-github-pages/github-pages-limits) | Static sites up to 1 GB, soft limit of 100 GB bandwidth a month | No sleep | Not allowed as a "free web-hosting service to run your online business"; static only, so no API key on the server | 2026-10-28 |

Source: each vendor's pricing or docs page, linked in the table and under Sources, checked 2026-10-28.

## Hosts that fit an AI app

- **Vercel Hobby** is the easiest for a Next.js chat app: a function can run up to 300 seconds, enough for a slow LLM answer. The rule that matters is on its fair use page: the Hobby plan "restricts users to non-commercial, personal use only". A side project is fine; a paid product is not. Pro is a paid plan. See the [offer page for Vercel's startup program](https://aifree.dev/offer/vercel-startups) if you qualify.
- **Cloudflare Workers** gives 100,000 requests a day with no sleeping, but only 10 ms of CPU time per invocation. Time spent waiting for a model API is not CPU time, so proxying an LLM call is usually fine; heavy parsing in the Worker is not. Details: [Workers free plan](https://aifree.dev/offer/cloudflare-workers-free-plan).
- **Workers AI** runs open models on Cloudflare's network for 10,000 Neurons a day. How many answers that is depends on the model; a small model gives many more than a 70B one. See [Workers AI free tier](https://aifree.dev/offer/cloudflare-workers-ai-free-tier).
- **Deno Deploy** and **Netlify** are the other no-sleep options; see the [Deno Deploy plan](https://aifree.dev/offer/deno-deploy-free-plan) and the [Netlify free plan](https://aifree.dev/offer/netlify-free-plan).

## Hosts with a catch

- **Hugging Face Spaces** used to be the default place to put a Gradio demo for free. On 2026-10-28 its docs say: "Gradio and Docker Spaces run on compute and require a paid plan to create". Static Spaces are free, and a free account can still run up to 2 Gradio Spaces on ZeroGPU. See [ZeroGPU Spaces](https://aifree.dev/offer/hugging-face-zerogpu-spaces).
- **Render** is a real server for free, but it sleeps: after 15 minutes without traffic the service spins down and the next visitor waits about a minute. The free Postgres database is deleted 30 days after creation (14 days of grace to upgrade). Fine for a demo you show someone, bad for a public app.
- **Fly.io** has no free tier for new organizations. Accounts on plans discontinued in October 2024 keep their old allowances. Anyone else gets a short trial and then adds a card.
- **Google Cloud Run** has a real monthly free amount and scales to zero, but it sits behind a billing account, so a bug that loops can cost money. Set a budget alert. Google's other free products are in the [Google Cloud free program](https://aifree.dev/offer/google-cloud-free-program).
- **Railway** is closer to a trial than a free plan: $1 of usage a month after the $5 trial credit. See [Railway](https://aifree.dev/offer/railway-free-plan-and-trial-credits).

## Which one to pick

- **A hobby chat app in Next.js:** Vercel Hobby. Keep it non-commercial.
- **An app that might earn money:** Cloudflare Workers or Deno Deploy, then check their terms; avoid Hobby.
- **A demo with a model on a free GPU:** a ZeroGPU Space on Hugging Face.
- **A Python server that must stay up between requests:** Render sleeps (about a minute to wake); Cloud Run scales to zero but needs a billing account.
- **A static front end with a separate API:** GitHub Pages or Cloudflare static assets.

Pair the host with a model: the [chat app stack](https://aifree.dev/stack/chat) and the [tool-calling agent stack](https://aifree.dev/stack/agent) pick a free LLM API and a free host from the catalog, and the [RAG stack](https://aifree.dev/stack/rag) adds a vector database.

## Steps

1. Put the app in a Git repository and keep the model API key in an environment variable, never in the browser code.
2. Connect the repository to the host (Vercel, Netlify, Render and Cloudflare all deploy on push).
3. Add the API key as a secret in the host's settings and deploy.
4. Open the live URL, send three prompts and look at the host's usage page to see what they cost in requests or CPU time.
5. Add a spending alert where a card is on file (Cloud Run, Fly.io).

## Limits and the catch

- **Free plans change.** Fly.io removed its free allowance in 2024 and Hugging Face now asks for a paid plan to create Gradio Spaces; re-read the pricing page before you rely on a limit.
- **Commercial use differs.** Vercel Hobby and GitHub Pages forbid running a business on them; check the terms before you take a payment.
- **Sleeping hosts are slow for the first visitor.** Render's wake-up takes about a minute.
- **Request time matters for LLMs.** A model answer can take many seconds: check the maximum duration of a function or request on the plan you choose.
- **Your visitors spend your API quota.** A free host does not cap the model bill or rate limit; see [rate limits](https://aifree.dev/explain/rate-limits).

## Offers in this guide

- [Cloudflare Workers Free Plan](https://aifree.dev/offer/cloudflare-workers-free-plan.md): 100,000 requests/day, no card. Free serverless hosting on Cloudflare: 100,000 Worker requests per day
- [Cloudflare Workers AI Free Tier](https://aifree.dev/offer/cloudflare-workers-ai-free-tier.md): 10,000 credits/day, no card. 10,000 free Workers AI Neurons per day for open LLMs and embeddings
- [Netlify free plan](https://aifree.dev/offer/netlify-free-plan.md): 300 credits/month, no card. Free forever - 300 credits/month, no card
- [Deno Deploy Free Plan](https://aifree.dev/offer/deno-deploy-free-plan.md): 1,000,000 requests/month, no card. Free Deno Deploy hosting: 1M requests and 20 GiB egress per month
- [Hugging Face ZeroGPU Free GPU Access on Spaces](https://aifree.dev/offer/hugging-face-zerogpu-spaces.md): 5 minutes/day, no card. ZeroGPU dynamically allocates NVIDIA RTX Pro 6000 Blackwell GPUs to Gradio
- [Google Cloud Free Program](https://aifree.dev/offer/google-cloud-free-program.md): $300, card. $300 in free Google Cloud credits for 90 days plus 20+ always-free products
- [Railway Free Plan and Trial Credits](https://aifree.dev/offer/railway-free-plan-and-trial-credits.md): $5, no card. $5 one-time Railway trial credit plus $1 of free credit a month

## Frequently asked questions

### What is the best free hosting for an AI app?

For a personal Next.js app, Vercel Hobby (functions up to 300 s, 1,000,000 invocations a month). For something that may earn money, Cloudflare Workers (100,000 requests a day) or Deno Deploy (1M requests a month), because Vercel Hobby is limited to non-commercial use. Limits checked 2026-10-28.

### Can I use Vercel Hobby for a commercial app?

No. Vercel's Hobby plan page says it restricts users to non-commercial, personal use only. A paid Pro plan is needed for a business or an app that takes payments.

### Is Hugging Face Spaces still free?

Static Spaces are free for everyone, and the CPU Basic hardware (2 vCPU, 16 GB RAM) has no hourly cost, but creating a Gradio or Docker Space now requires a paid plan. Free personal accounts can host up to 2 Gradio Spaces on ZeroGPU. Free hardware goes to sleep when unused.

### Does Fly.io have a free tier?

Not for new organizations. Its pricing page says new organizations have no free tier or monthly free usage allowance, only a trial of up to 2 hours of Machine runtime or 7 days, and a card is needed afterwards. Accounts on plans discontinued in October 2024 keep their old allowances.

### Does a free Render service sleep?

Yes. A free web service spins down after 15 minutes without traffic and takes about a minute to start again on the next request. Each workspace gets 750 free instance hours a month, and a free Postgres database expires 30 days after creation.

### How much of Workers AI is free?

Cloudflare gives 10,000 Neurons a day on both the free and paid Workers plans, reset at 00:00 UTC. How many answers that covers depends on the model. Paid use costs $0.011 per 1,000 Neurons.

## Sources

- https://vercel.com/docs/plans/hobby
- https://developers.cloudflare.com/workers/platform/pricing/
- https://developers.cloudflare.com/workers-ai/platform/pricing/
- https://huggingface.co/docs/hub/spaces-overview
- https://render.com/docs/free
- https://docs.fly.io/about/pricing
- https://cloud.google.com/run/pricing
- https://www.netlify.com/pricing/
- https://deno.com/deploy/pricing
- https://railway.com/pricing
- https://docs.github.com/en/pages/getting-started-with-github-pages/github-pages-limits

HTML page: https://aifree.dev/learn/free-hosting-ai-apps