Answer four questions and get the two or three free hosts that fit what you are building, with the catch for each one spelled out before you sign up. Every result links to the article where we tested or checked it.
Figures checked August to September 2026. Free tiers change often, so confirm in the linked article before you build.
Stop looking for these: the free tier is gone
- Heroku — no free tier; the cheapest plan is paid.
- Koyeb — the free Starter plan closed to new users after the February 2026 Mistral acquisition; new accounts start on Pro at $29 a month.
- Fly.io — free allowances were retired in 2024; new accounts get a short trial, then pay as they go.
- Hugging Face CPU Spaces — creating a CPU Gradio or Docker Space now needs a paid plan; free accounts keep static Spaces and up to 2 ZeroGPU demos.
- AWS "12 months free" — accounts created since 15 July 2025 get up to $200 in credits valid for 6 months instead. Not an always-free server.
Results only use figures from our own articles. "Not stated" means the article does not say either way, not that the answer is no. Comparing PHP hosts? The four live deployments show the measured speed side by side.