01The free hosts compared
Each of these serves files from a global network with free HTTPS. The differences are in limits and in what they allow.
| Host | Free limits | Commercial use | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| GitHub Pages | 1 GB site, soft 100 GB/month bandwidth | Not allowed for running an online business | Personal sites, docs, open source |
| Cloudflare Pages / Workers | 500 builds/month, 20,000 files, 25 MiB per file | Allowed | Business sites, high traffic |
| Netlify Free | 300 credits/month: deploys 15 each, bandwidth 20 per GB | Not restricted on the pricing page | Small sites with few deploys |
| Vercel Hobby | 100 GB transfer, 1M function calls/month | Personal, non-commercial only | Personal Next.js projects |
02Read the rules before you pick
Vercel's fair use guidelines say Hobby teams are restricted to non-commercial personal use and define commercial use broadly: taking payments, advertising a product or service, being paid to build or host the site, affiliate-focused sites and sites with ads all count. A small business site on Hobby breaks the rules, even if nothing stops you on day one.
GitHub's Pages limits say it is not intended for or allowed to be used as free hosting to run an online business. Netlify's credit system gives the Free plan 300 credits a month; each production deploy costs 15 and bandwidth costs 20 per GB, and when the credits are gone all projects pause with a "Site not available" page until the next month.
Cloudflare's Pages limits are generous and do not restrict commercial use, which makes it the usual pick for a free business site. Cloudflare now recommends Workers for new projects, with Pages still supported.
03Step by step: a static site on a free host
- 1Get your site as filesHTML, CSS and images, or a project that builds into them (Next.js, Astro, Vite). Many builders let you export.
- 2Put it in a GitHub repositoryCreate a repository and upload or push the files.
- 3Connect the hostIn Cloudflare, Netlify or Vercel, import the repository. They detect the framework and build it.
- 4Check the free addressYou get a URL like name.pages.dev, name.netlify.app or name.vercel.app.
- 5Add your domainAdd it in the host's domain settings and copy the DNS records to your registrar. How to connect a custom domain to Vercel shows the process.
- 6Push to updateEvery change pushed to GitHub redeploys automatically.
04What free hosting cannot do
Static hosts serve files. A site that needs a database, user accounts, a shop or server code needs functions, a backend service or a different kind of host. Forms and email signups can be handled by services; how to add a contact form to a static website covers that. WordPress needs PHP and a database, so it does not run on these hosts; how much does website hosting cost? covers paid options.
Free also means no one to call. Support is community forums and documentation, and a viral moment can hit limits. For a business, the $20 a month of a paid plan is cheap insurance; for a personal site, free is plenty.
05Free website builders as an alternative
If you do not have files and do not want to deal with GitHub, builders host for you. Their free plans usually put the site on their subdomain and may show their branding; connecting your own domain is typically paid. How to host an AI-generated website covers sites made with AI tools, and build a website with AI for free covers making one at no cost.
What people who tried it say
Hacker News threads on free hosting praise Cloudflare's generous free tier and warn about surprise bills elsewhere, most famously a $104,000 Netlify invoice for a static site under its old usage pricing.
- Why is Cloudflare Pages' bandwidth unlimited?Hacker News
Commenters explain the free tier as a funnel to paid and enterprise products and praise Cloudflare's no-egress-fee approach.
- Netlify just sent me a $104k bill for a simple static siteHacker News
A DDoS on a free static site produced a huge usage bill; the thread pushed hosts toward hard caps, which Netlify's current Free plan now has.
Looking for more first-hand opinions? Search Reddit for “how to host a website for free”. We link the live threads rather than summarizing them, so you read them in full.
Our take
for a business, start on Cloudflare's free tier or a paid plan elsewhere; for a personal project, any of the four is fine. The rules matter more than the limits for most small sites.
Where this falls short
Free plans change often, and these limits were checked in October 2026. Check each host's current pricing and terms before committing, especially the commercial-use rules.
Orlume hosts every site it builds for free at name.orlume.site, with publishing in one click and no repository or build settings to configure. The free plan includes 10 message credits.
Free to start · No card required · Live in one click
Sources
- 1.Fair use guidelines · Vercel
- 2.GitHub Pages limits · GitHub Docs
- 3.How credits work · Netlify Docs
- 4.Pages limits · Cloudflare Docs
Researched and written by the Orlume team · Updated October 2026
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