DEV Community

Alex Spinov
Alex Spinov

Posted on

Render Has a Free Tier — Static Sites, Web Services, and PostgreSQL With Zero DevOps

#render #webdev #deployment #free

When Heroku killed their free tier in 2022, thousands of developers needed a new home for their side projects. Most of them landed on Render.

Four years later, Render's free tier is still one of the most generous in the industry — and it keeps getting better.

What You Get Free

No credit card required:

  • Static sites — unlimited, with global CDN, auto-deploy from Git, custom domains
  • Web services — 750 hours/month of free instance hours
  • PostgreSQL — 256MB database, free for 90 days (then $7/month or create a new one)
  • Redis — 25MB, free for 90 days
  • Cron jobs — scheduled tasks on free instances
  • Auto-deploy from GitHub/GitLab — push to branch, Render deploys
  • Free TLS — automatic HTTPS on all services
  • DDoS protection — included on all plans
  • Instant rollbacks — one-click to previous deploy

Quick Start

No CLI needed. The dashboard does everything:

  1. Go to render.com → New → Web Service
  2. Connect GitHub repo
  3. Render detects your runtime (Node, Python, Go, Rust, Docker)
  4. Click Deploy

Or use a render.yaml blueprint for infrastructure-as-code:

services:
  - type: web
    name: my-api
    runtime: node
    buildCommand: npm install
    startCommand: node server.js
    envVars:
      - key: DATABASE_URL
        fromDatabase:
          name: mydb
          property: connectionString

databases:
  - name: mydb
    plan: free
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode 
# Just push render.yaml to your repo
# Render auto-detects and provisions everything
git push origin main
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Real Example: Express API + PostgreSQL 

const express = require('express');
const { Pool } = require('pg');

const app = express();
app.use(express.json());

const pool = new Pool({
  connectionString: process.env.DATABASE_URL,
  ssl: { rejectUnauthorized: false }
});

app.get('/api/items', async (req, res) => {
  const { rows } = await pool.query('SELECT * FROM items ORDER BY created_at DESC LIMIT 100');
  res.json(rows);
});

app.post('/api/items', async (req, res) => {
  const { name, description } = req.body;
  const { rows } = await pool.query(
    'INSERT INTO items (name, description) VALUES ($1, $2) RETURNING *',
    [name, description]
  );
  res.status(201).json(rows[0]);
});

app.listen(process.env.PORT || 3000);
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Deploy: connect repo → Render detects Node.js → add PostgreSQL → environment variable auto-injected → live in 3 minutes.

What You Can Build

1. Portfolio/blog — static site with custom domain. Unlimited bandwidth. Free forever.

2. API backend — Express/FastAPI/Go service. Good for MVPs and side projects.

3. Webhook handler — receive Stripe/GitHub webhooks, process, store in PostgreSQL.

4. Scheduled data jobs — cron jobs for scraping, reports, email digests.

5. Full-stack app — static React frontend + API backend + PostgreSQL. All free tier.

Free Tier Limits

Spin-down after 15 min inactivity. Free web services sleep when idle. First request after sleep takes 30-50 seconds (cold start). Not great for production APIs.

750 hours/month. Enough for one always-on service or several sleeping ones.

PostgreSQL expires. Free database lives 90 days, then gets deleted. You can create a new one, but data is gone. Export regularly or plan to upgrade.

No persistent disk. Free services have ephemeral filesystem. Uploads and generated files disappear on redeploy.

Build limits. 500 build minutes/month on free tier. Large projects with complex builds will hit this.

Render vs Alternatives

vs Vercel: Render supports any language/Docker. Vercel is mostly Next.js/frontend. Render gives you a real server with PostgreSQL.

vs Railway: Railway's $5 credit runs out. Render's free static sites and 750 hours are perpetual (no credit system).

vs Fly.io: Fly gives you global edge deployment. Render is simpler but single-region on free tier. Pick based on whether you need multi-region.

vs Heroku: Render is the spiritual successor to Heroku's free tier. Similar DX, actually free.

The Heroku Replacement

Render took the best parts of Heroku's developer experience — git push deploys, managed databases, zero config — and made them free again.

If you're still looking for a home for your side projects after the Heroku migration, Render is the answer most developers landed on. And for good reason.

Need custom deployment automation? Email spinov001@gmail.com

More free tiers: 36+ Free APIs Every Developer Should Bookmark

Also in this series: Netlify Free Tier | Vercel Free Tier | Fly.io Free Tier | Railway Free Tier

Top comments (0)