"Free hosting" in 2026 usually means static files — Vercel, Netlify and Cloudflare Pages will serve HTML forever and will not execute one line of PHP. If your project is WordPress, Laravel, or a coursework script that needs a MySQL database, that whole category is useless to you.
The shared-PHP survivors are fewer than the listicles suggest: 000webhost closed in 2024, and x10Hosting's free signups are shut. Below is what the hosts still running actually give you, taken from each provider's own documentation, plus the rules that quietly kill free sites.
Free PHP Hosting Compared in 2026
| InfinityFree | ByetHost | AwardSpace | HelioHost | FreeHostia | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Disk | 5 GB | 5 GB NVMe | 1 GB | 1,000 MB (files + DBs) | 250 MB |
| Traffic ceiling | Unlimited BW, 50,000 hits/day | Unlimited BW | 5 GB/month | Unlimited BW, capped by CPU/RAM load | 6 GB/month |
| PHP | 8.3 only | 8.3 (Zend + ionCube) | PHP, 32 MB memory limit | 5.6 to 8.5, switchable | PHP 4/5/7/8 |
| Database | MySQL 8 / MariaDB, 400 DBs | Unlimited MySQL 8 / MariaDB | 1 MySQL, 30 MB | Unlimited MariaDB + PostgreSQL + SQLite | 1 MySQL, 10 MB |
| Domains | Unlimited | Unlimited addon/parked | 1 + 3 subdomains | Up to 5 (Johnny) | 5 |
| Email accounts | 0 | Not on the free plan | 1 (sends 31/month) | Unlimited | 3 |
| Cron jobs | ❌ Off platform-wide since 2023 | Advertised ✅ (verify) | ❌ | ✅ Unlimited | ❌ Not on free |
| Free SSL | ✅ | ✅ on subdomains | ❌ None | ✅ Let's Encrypt | ✅ Let's Encrypt |
| Other languages | ❌ PHP only | ❌ PHP only | ❌ PHP only | Node, Python, Java, .NET, Go, Ruby | ❌ PHP only |
| Server region | United Kingdom | Not published | Sofia, Bulgaria | Silicon Valley, USA | Not published |
| Card required | No | No | No | No | No |
All five put zero forced ads on your site — the 2000s model of paying with a banner is gone; these hosts fund the free tier with upgrade sales, donations, or a paid parent brand. Figures come from InfinityFree, Byet, AwardSpace, the HelioHost wiki and FreeHostia — not from review sites.
Which One Fits Your Project
InfinityFree — the default for a website. The most disk, unlimited domains on one account, PHP 8.3 and Softaculous. Its ceiling is throughput, not storage: 50,000 hits a day, where a hit is every file request, not a visitor. Their own example counts one page with 2 CSS, 3 JS and 5 images as 11 hits — so a lean site gets roughly 4,500 page views a day, a plugin-heavy WordPress theme closer to 1,000–1,600. Full details in our InfinityFree review.
ByetHost — InfinityFree's sibling, with one interesting difference. Same iFastNet infrastructure, same VistaPanel, same 5 GB and PHP 8.3, but unlimited databases instead of 400 and a feature list that advertises cron jobs. That deserves a flag rather than a recommendation: InfinityFree states cron has been disabled platform-wide since August 2023, so if scheduled tasks are why you are signing up, test one before you build on it.
AwardSpace — only if you need a mailbox. Running since 2003, and the one free host here that hands you a real inbox on your own domain. But the free plan has no SSL at all, and outgoing connections are disabled — curl_init, fsockopen and allow_url_fopen are blocked, which breaks WordPress updates, OAuth logins and every third-party API call. Our AwardSpace review documents both.
HelioHost — the one for developers. A 501(c)(3) non-profit running its own hardware for 21 years, and technically the most generous free account on this page: PHP 5.6 through 8.5 with a version switcher, unlimited MariaDB and PostgreSQL and SQLite databases, unlimited email accounts, Plesk, and unlimited cron jobs. It also runs Node.js, Python, Java, .NET, Go and Ruby, which no other host here does. Two costs: 1,000 MB of space covers files and databases, and free signups on the Johnny server are rationed — slots reset every 12 hours at midnight and noon UTC, so you may have to wait for one (a $2 one-time donation opens a Tommy account immediately).
FreeHostia — the smallest, and the easiest to outgrow. 250 MB of disk and a 10 MB database is enough for a brochure site or a class exercise; a WordPress install with images hits the wall in weeks. Its advantage over AwardSpace is five hosted domains and Let's Encrypt SSL that actually works.
The Rules That Actually Kill Free PHP Sites
Nobody loses a free site to the disk quota. They lose it to a rule in the terms:
- Inactivity deletion. HelioHost suspends free accounts if you do not log in at
heliohost.orgonce every 30 days — email warning at day 28, offline at day 30, reactivate at/renew. InfinityFree deactivates accounts that get almost no visitors for 30 days. AwardSpace permanently deletes accounts after 12 months without traffic. - Load caps, not bandwidth caps. HelioHost publishes the exact numbers — no more than 200 GB of memory and 10,000 CPU units per day — and suspends accounts that exceed them. InfinityFree keeps its CPU/RAM figures deliberately confidential so they cannot be gamed. "Unlimited bandwidth" never means unlimited compute.
- No SSH anywhere. None of the five gives you a shell. HelioHost comes closest: SSH is disabled, but Plesk's Scheduled Tasks can run jailed shell commands. Everywhere else it is FTP and a file manager, so
composer installandnpm run buildhappen on your laptop and you upload the result. - Commercial use is allowed, support is not. All five permit business sites and your own ads. What none provides is an SLA, phone support, or any obligation to keep your data — keep your own backups of files and database, unconditionally.
None of these hosts sleeps, though. They are shared Apache accounts, not containers that scale to zero, so there is no cold start — unlike the free PaaS tiers where the first request after idle takes about a minute to wake.
Where the Servers Are
No free plan here offers a region picker, and only three publish a location: InfinityFree serves from the United Kingdom, AwardSpace from Sofia, Bulgaria, and HelioHost from its own hardware in a Silicon Valley datacenter. Byet and FreeHostia do not say.
We have not benchmarked these — that needs live accounts on each, and the numbers above are documentation, not a stopwatch. What geography guarantees regardless: a European host adds a transatlantic hop for US visitors and more for Asia-Pacific, and HelioHost inverts that. Putting Cloudflare's free CDN in front fixes most of it — and on InfinityFree or Byet it also spends fewer of your 50,000 daily hits, since cached assets never reach the origin.
What Is Closed (Do Not Trust Old Lists)
- 000webhost — shut down 14 October 2024 after 17 years; users did not get their files back. Still the top recommendation in dozens of unmaintained roundups.
- x10Hosting — the site is up, but free signups are closed: "our free web hosting signups are currently unavailable due to a scheduled maintenance," with no restart date and a redirect to its paid brand.
- FreeHosting.com — genuinely alive with an unusual 10 GB and cPanel, but the free plan runs PHP 7, offers no SSL and no cron, and gives you no subdomain, so you must already own a domain to use it at all.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I run WordPress on free PHP hosting?
On InfinityFree, ByetHost and HelioHost, yes — all three bundle Softaculous. On AwardSpace it installs but cannot update itself, because outgoing PHP connections are blocked. FreeHostia's 250 MB and 10 MB database will hold a small install and little else. Everywhere, keep plugins lean: every asset a plugin loads counts against your hits or load budget.
Is free PHP hosting good enough for a business site?
For a brochure site with modest traffic it works, and the terms allow it. What you give up is an SLA, staffed support, and any guarantee your data survives — free hosts close, as 000webhost did. If the site earns money, treat free hosting as a staging environment and budget a few dollars a month for production.
Which free host lets me run cron jobs?
HelioHost is the only one that clearly does: unlimited scheduled tasks in Plesk, which can also run jailed shell commands. They count toward your daily load, so a job firing every minute will get you suspended. Byet advertises cron, but the same platform's InfinityFree documentation says cron is off — verify before relying on it.
Can I host an API or mobile app backend on these?
Not on the iFastNet platform. InfinityFree runs a filter that only lets real browsers reach your site, so an endpoint works in Chrome and fails from curl or a mobile app, and hosting an API is banned outright by the terms. AwardSpace blocks outbound calls, which breaks the other direction. HelioHost is the one place here where a small JSON API is realistic.
The Verdict
Free PHP hosting still exists, and it is better than its reputation: no ads, no card, no expiry countdown. Pick by the wall you will hit first — InfinityFree for the most room and the simplest path to a WordPress site, HelioHost if you need cron, a database that is not MySQL, real email, or a language other than PHP, AwardSpace only when a mailbox matters more than HTTPS.
Plan the exit from day one. When you need SSH, a background worker, or an endpoint machines can call, no bigger free shared plan exists — the next step is a free VPS where you install PHP yourself and trade an afternoon of setup for the removal of every limit above.