Can you run a production app on Render's free tier?

No. Render's Deploy for Free docs, which show no date and were read on October 24, 2026, put it in 2 sentences about its free web services, Postgres databases, and Key Value instances: “Free instances have important limitations, described below. Do not use them for production applications.” The next sentence says what they are for: “However, they're perfect for testing out a new technology, working on a hobby project, or previewing Render's developer experience.”

The limits are what keep a free instance away from customers. A free web service “spins down” after 15 minutes without inbound traffic and takes “about one minute” to start again. Each workspace gets 750 free instance hours a month, and when they run out, Render suspends every free web service until the next month. A free Postgres database expires 30 days after it's created, and 14 days later Render deletes it “along with all of its data” unless you've moved it to a paid plan. Paid compute plans don't spin down, and the smallest paid web service costs $7 a month on Render's pricing page.

The production rule isn't in Render's contract. Render's Terms of Service, last modified July 10, 2026, don't mention free instances and set no personal-use or non-commercial limit, and neither does its Acceptable Use Policy, last modified August 22, 2025. Render doesn't say a business can't use a free instance. Its docs say not to run production on one, and the limits below are what Render enforces.

As of October 24, 2026, 08:09 JST (October 23, 23:09 UTC). Render's docs and pricing page show no date of their own, only “© Render 2026”, so each fact on this page is from the version read on October 24. Prices are Render's, in US dollars. Terms change, so check them before you launch.

If you're moving a backend off Railway after its October 2026 security incident, the steps for the keys you stored there are in Railway security incident, October 2026: what to do now, and Render publishes its own guide to moving from Railway. This page covers Render's free tier only: what it includes, what its terms say about business use, what stops first when real users arrive, and what the first paid step costs.

What Render's docs say about free instances

Render runs 4 kinds of service for free, per its Deploy for Free docs:

• Web services, “web apps in Node.js, Python, Rails, etc.”
• Render Postgres databases
• Render Key Value instances, Render's Redis-compatible store
• Static sites, which “are free to deploy on Render.”

The same page says “Other service types don't support Free instances.” Background workers, private services, and cron jobs need a paid compute plan from the start.

2 more lines from that page matter before you plan around free:

• Paying for the workspace doesn't lift the limits. “Upgrading your workspace plan does not remove limitations on Free instances.” A free instance keeps its limits until you move that service to a paid compute plan.
• Free still meters bandwidth and builds. “Web services and static sites count against your monthly included amounts of outbound bandwidth and pipeline minutes.”

Render's pricing page says the same thing in other words. Its FAQ says free compute plans “are designed to help you to explore new tech, build personal projects, and preview Render's developer experience,” and it describes the $0 Hobby workspace as “For individuals building personal projects and prototypes.”

What “free” means on Render, item by item

Also missing on a free web service, per the same docs: edge caching, one-off jobs, shell access over SSH or the dashboard, and incoming traffic from Render's private network. A free web service does get custom domains, managed TLS certificates, service previews, log streams, and rollbacks to its 2 most recent previous deploys.

Is Render free for commercial use?

Render doesn't rule it out. Neither its Terms of Service nor its Acceptable Use Policy mentions free instances, and neither limits free use to personal or non-commercial projects. The Terms grant a license “to use the Service for own use only and as permitted by the features of the Service.” The Acceptable Use Policy says you may not “Resell, rent, lease, or otherwise provide the Service to third parties,” or use it “for cryptocurrency mining or other unauthorized commercial purposes.” The Terms also expect business customers: their arbitration clause has one rule “If you are using the Service for commercial purposes” and another for “an individual using the Service for non-commercial purposes.”

So is “Do not use them for production applications” a rule or advice? The Terms bind you to themselves, the Acceptable Use Policy, the Data Processing Addendum, and the Privacy Policy. The Deploy for Free docs aren't on that list, and they don't say what Render does when a free instance serves production. This page's reading: it's advice, and the free limits enforce it. It isn't a ban on business use like Vercel Hobby's “non-commercial personal use only,” which Can you use Vercel's Hobby plan for a commercial site? goes through case by case. Render Support has the final say.

2 clauses of the Terms apply on every plan, free included:

• No card data. You agree not to “transmit, submit, upload or store” Sensitive Data on Render, and that includes “payment cardholder information or financial account information.” An app that takes payments can't keep card numbers in its Render database.
• Render can change or stop the service. “We may, without prior notice, change the Service; stop providing the Service or features of the Service, to you or to Users generally; or create usage limits for the Service.” Render may also suspend your access “without notice and liability for any reason.”

What breaks first when real users arrive

1. The first visit after a quiet spell waits. After 15 minutes without traffic, the next request waits about a minute while the service starts. A browser sees Render's loading page. Render doesn't say what an API client, a mobile app, or a webhook sender receives during that minute, or whether its request waits or fails.
2. Search engines may be told to stay out. While a free web service is spun down, Render answers requests for /robots.txt itself with a standard “disallow all” response, and the request doesn't wake the service. A crawler that checks then is told not to crawl any page of the site.
3. The database stops on day 30. A free Postgres database can't be reached 30 days after creation unless you upgrade it, and it is deleted 14 days later. Render emails you before each date.
4. The hours run out when more than 1 service stays awake. 750 hours cover 1 free web service running all month, since a 31-day month has 744 hours. 2 services that never spin down use them up in about 15 and a half days, by this page's arithmetic from Render's figure, and every free web service in the workspace is then suspended until the month ends.
5. Data in memory or on disk disappears. Key Value data is lost on restart, files are lost on spin-down, and Render may restart either one at any time.
6. There's no bandwidth headroom without a card. Past 5 GB of outbound traffic in a month, a workspace with no payment method has its free services suspended for the rest of the month.

Render's status page showed “All Systems Operational” at 08:09 JST on October 24, 2026. Its most recent incident, “Degraded network performance” on web services and static sites, ran from 16:05 to 17:34 UTC on October 23, and Render linked it to “an upstream provider.”

Case by case: what fits on Render's free tier

The table applies Render's docs to the apps people ask about. Where the docs don't cover a case, the last column says so.

When a static site is enough

If the part customers see first is a landing page, a portfolio, or docs, it doesn't need a free web service. Render's static sites “are fast and free to deploy,” built from a Git repository and served over Render's global CDN, with an onrender.com address and room for custom domains. Static sites “do not have a compute plan at all, because they do not perform server-side processing,” per Render's compute plans docs, and Render's docs describe spin-down only for free web services.

Static sites still count against the workspace's allowances. A Render Hobby workspace includes 5 GB of outbound bandwidth and 500 build minutes a month, and 2 custom domains, with each extra domain at $0.25 a month. Past the bandwidth, a workspace with a payment method pays $0.15 per GB. Without one, Render's bandwidth docs say it “spins down your workspace's services until the start of the next month.”

The API behind the page is the part that needs a paid instance.

What to pay for, and when

Render bills 3 things, per its pricing FAQ: “your workspace plan (flat subscription), metered features like bandwidth (usage-based), and compute for your applications (usage-based).” The Hobby workspace has no fee. Render's Platform Features by Plan docs say “The Hobby plan does not have a monthly fee, so you only pay for usage. Each Hobby workspace is limited to a single team member and 25 total services.” So the first paid step can be one service's compute, with the workspace left on Hobby.

By this page's sum of Render's list prices, a small app with 1 web service and 1 Postgres database starts at $13 a month on a Hobby workspace, and the pricing page lists Postgres storage as “1 GB SSD storage included” and “Expandable storage ($0.30/GB).” Render's pricing page describes Pro as “For teams deploying production-grade apps and agents,” but Render doesn't say a paid service on a Hobby workspace can't serve production. Paid services bill by the second, so a service you turn off after a day costs a day's compute.

Other free hosts, on the same questions

The other hosts' rows come from their pages on convika.com, whose sources were read on October 23, 2026. Follow each link for the quotes and the sources.

Railway isn't in the table: convika.com covers its October 2026 security incident, not its plans. Free hosting traffic limits compared and free hosting for a business site set more hosts side by side.

For the landing page in front of the app, Convika serves each published HTML page from storage on every request, so no instance of yours spins down, and its Free plan includes 10,000 page views a month (pricing says what happens past them). Convika doesn't run your backend code or host a Postgres database, so the API and its data stay on a paid Render instance or another host.

Frequently asked questions

Is Render free forever?

Yes for free web services and static sites, and no for Postgres. Render's pricing page lists the Hobby workspace at “$0/mo + compute” and calls static sites “Always free to deploy,” and its docs set no end date for a free web service, whose 750 instance hours reset each month. A free Postgres database expires 30 days after creation and is deleted 14 days later unless you upgrade it.

Does Render's free tier sleep?

Yes. Render spins down a free web service that goes 15 minutes without inbound traffic, HTTP requests and WebSocket messages included, and starts it again on the next HTTP request or new WebSocket connection. Paid compute plans don't spin down. Static sites have no compute plan, and Render's docs describe spin-down only for free web services.

How long does a Render free instance take to wake up?

About a minute. Render's Deploy for Free docs say spinning back up “takes about one minute,” and its FAQ says “about a minute.” Browsers see a loading page while the service starts. Render doesn't say what an API client or a webhook sender gets during that time.

Do Render free databases get deleted?

Yes. A free Render Postgres database expires 30 days after creation and can't be reached unless you upgrade it to a paid plan. After a 14-day grace period, “Render deletes the database (along with all of its data).” Free databases have no backups. A free Key Value instance has no expiry date, but it keeps its data in memory only, so a restart erases it.

Can I use Render's free tier for a business?

No, not for anything your customers rely on. Render's Terms of Service, last modified July 10, 2026, set no personal-use limit, and its Acceptable Use Policy bars reselling the Service and “cryptocurrency mining or other unauthorized commercial purposes.” But the free-instance docs say “Do not use them for production applications,” and the limits enforce it: a 15-minute spin-down, 750 hours a month, and a Postgres database that expires after 30 days. For a customer-facing app, the docs' way out of the limits is a paid compute plan, from $7 a month for a web service.

Is Render free for commercial use?

Yes, as far as Render's terms go. Neither its Terms of Service nor its Acceptable Use Policy mentions free instances or limits them to non-commercial use, unlike Vercel Hobby's “non-commercial personal use only.” The limit is in Render's docs: “Do not use them for production applications.” This page reads that as advice that the free limits enforce, and Render Support has the final say.

How many free hours does Render give?

750 a month per workspace. A free web service uses them while it runs, and a spun-down one uses none. When they run out, Render suspends all free web services until the start of the next month, and unused hours don't roll over.

Is Render static site hosting free?

Yes. “Static sites are free to deploy on Render,” per its docs, with a global CDN, managed TLS certificates, and custom domains. They count against the workspace's monthly bandwidth and build minutes: 5 GB and 500 minutes on a Hobby workspace, then $0.15 per GB and $5 per 1,000 minutes with a payment method. A Render Hobby workspace includes 2 custom domains, and each extra one costs $0.25 a month.

Does upgrading to Render Pro remove the free limits?

No. Render's docs say “Upgrading your workspace plan does not remove limitations on Free instances.” The limits go when you move a service to a paid compute plan, from $7 a month for a web service and $6 a month for Postgres. Render's Pro workspace, at $25 a month plus compute, adds seats, bandwidth, and team features.

Can a Render free instance run a cron job or a background worker?

No. Render's docs list web services, Postgres, Key Value, and static sites as the free types and say “Other service types don't support Free instances.” A Render cron job bills by the second, and Render's cron job docs add “a minimum monthly charge of $1 per cron job service.”

Sources

Each source was read on October 24, 2026; times are JST (UTC+9). Dates in parentheses are the document's own.

• Render: Deploy for Free (no date on the page; read 07:53 and 08:09)
• Render Terms of Service (last modified July 10, 2026; read 07:53, 08:09, and 08:35)
• Render Acceptable Use Policy (last modified August 22, 2025; read 07:53 and 08:09)
• Render pricing (no date on the page; read 07:53, 08:09, and 08:35)
• Render: Static Sites (no date on the page; read 07:53 and 08:09)
• Render: Outbound Bandwidth (no date on the page; read 07:55 and 08:09)
• Render: Compute Plans (no date on the page; read 07:55 and 08:09) and Updates to Render Compute Plans (the change it describes is dated August 26, 2026; read 07:59)
• Render: Platform Features by Plan (no date on the page; read 07:55 and 08:09)
• Render: FAQ (no date on the page; read 07:55 and 08:09)
• Render: Cron Jobs (no date on the page; read 07:55 and 08:09)
• Render: Create and connect to Render Postgres (no date on the page; read 07:56 and 08:09)
• Render: Migrate from Railway to Render (no date on the page; read 07:55)
• Render status and its incident history (read 07:57 and 08:09)