Your agent put the app online. Will your data still be there next week?

You asked your coding agent to "just put it online." It did. You got a link, the app works, and you've already added your first five to-dos.

Here's the question nobody asked: where did those five to-dos go, and what will delete them?

It depends on the route your agent picked. One keeps nothing on a server. One keeps your database for 72 hours. One wipes your SQLite file (a whole database in a single file) every time the app falls asleep. We looked at seven routes, starting with the ones where nobody signs up. We build Cloudish, one of the seven, and used AI in preparing this post.

How long does your data last?

Route	Who signs up first	Where the data lives	What deletes it
Netlify, no account	Nobody, for static sites	Nowhere on a server	Nothing to lose; claim the site within an hour to keep it
Claimable Neon	Nobody	A Postgres database, up to 100 MB	The whole project, after 72 hours, unless a person claims it
Cloudish with a volume	Nobody	A disk of 1, 5 or 20 GB	Only deleting the project
Render Free web service	A person	The app's own disk	Every redeploy, restart or nap
Render Free Postgres	A person	A 1 GB Postgres database	Expires after 30 days; deleted 14 days later unless upgraded
Railway with a volume	A person, on the $5 Hobby plan	A disk	Removed 60 days after you cancel
Fly.io with a volume	A person, with a card	A disk on one machine	A drive failure, if it's your only copy

Netlify: online in seconds, but nothing saved

Netlify's command line has a flag that, in its own words, "is useful for AI agents": netlify deploy --allow-anonymous. It "creates a project with a live URL. You have one hour to claim ownership by logging in or creating a Netlify account."

The catch for data comes right after: "sites or apps that use serverless functions or edge functions will require an account."

So this route is for pages. A portfolio, a landing page or a demo is perfect. A to-do list that saves to a server needs an account, or another route.

Claimable Neon: a real database, on a 72-hour clock

Claimable Neon lets your agent create a Postgres database with no account at all. Neon is upfront about the limits: "Unclaimed projects expire in 72 hours (project.expires_at) and are capped at 100 MB storage and 1 GB transfer. Claim codes expire in 15 minutes (expires_in). Those are two clocks."

Two things catch people out:

1. The claim code goes stale fast. It lasts 15 minutes. Your agent can ask for a fresh one, but only while the project itself is still alive.
2. Claiming changes the password. When you claim, Neon "revokes the project key, access tokens, and database password," and tells you to "Fetch a new DATABASE_URL there." Your live app keeps using the old one until someone updates it.

Great for a database you'll claim today. Not for data you want to keep without anyone ever logging in.

Cloudish: a disk nobody has to sign up for

Cloudish is the one we build. Here's how it keeps your data, and where it falls short.

Your agent creates its own key with one call. In Cloudish's words, there's "No signup, browser, card, OAuth or approval step." The app runs as a container, and the agent can give it a disk, which Cloudish calls a volume, of 1, 5 or 20 GB.

What deletes it? According to the FAQ, the volume "survives restarts, redeploys, idle scale-downs and running out of credits," and "only goes away when the project is deleted." If the prepaid balance runs out, the app stops within a minute, but the data on the disk stays.

What to know before you pick it:

• One app copy per disk. "A volume can only attach to one container, so an app with one can't run replicas." If you need several copies sharing a disk, look elsewhere.
• No managed database. "Cloudish has no managed Postgres/MySQL offering." SQLite on the disk is the simple path; you can also run Postgres inside the container.
• It isn't free. Disks aren't billed, but the app is, per second while it runs. The smallest size costs $0.0107 an hour, and by default the app sleeps after 15 quiet minutes, for free. Used an hour a day, that's about $4.90 a year; always on, $94.03.
• The smallest size can restart. An app on it that uses more than its 0.2 GB of memory "can be restarted" when its machine runs short. The disk survives that. For Postgres inside the container, Cloudish suggests a bigger size, about $13.53 a year at an hour a day.

Great for an app your agent deploys with SQLite or a small Postgres, when nobody wants to sign up. Not for apps that need several copies on one disk, or a managed database with backups.

Render Free: free, but your SQLite file won't last

Render Free needs a person: step one in Render's docs is "Sign up for Render." It's free, though, so it's worth knowing what happens to your files there.

Render "spins down a Free web service that goes 15 minutes without receiving any inbound traffic." The next visitor wakes it up, which "takes about one minute."

Then the part that matters: "any changes to your web service's filesystem (uploaded images, local SQLite databases, etc.) are lost every time the service redeploys, restarts, or spins down." Render also "might restart a Free web service at any time," and a free service can't get a disk of its own.

For data, Render's free option is Free Postgres, with "a fixed storage capacity of 1 GB." But "Free Render Postgres databases expire 30 days after creation." You then get 14 days to upgrade before "Render deletes the database (along with all of its data)."

Great for an API that stores nothing. Not for SQLite, uploads, or anything you want next month.

Railway, Fly.io and Render: disks with backups

If losing the data would really hurt, the safest bet is still a person with an account on a host that backs up its disks. Even Cloudish's FAQ points people to Railway, Render or Fly "if a human wants a long-running container with a volume and is happy to sign up in a browser and put a card on file."

• Railway: the Hobby plan is $5 a month and "includes a resource usage credit of $5." Disk space costs "$0.15 / GB / month", and services with volumes "support manual and automated backups." Cancel Hobby, and Railway deletes the disk's data 60 days later.
• Fly.io: a volume costs "$0.15/GB/month". Fly takes daily snapshots and keeps them "for five days by default." It also warns: "Always provision at least two volumes per app," because volumes don't copy data to each other. And after you sign up, "At some point, you'll be prompted for credit card payment information."
• Render, paid: attach a persistent disk to a paid service. Render "automatically creates a snapshot of your persistent disk once every 24 hours," and "Snapshots are available for seven days after they're created."

These disks share one limit with Cloudish's: a disk belongs to one running copy of your app. A Render disk "is accessible by only a single service instance," a Fly volume "can be attached to only one Machine," and on Railway, "Replicas cannot be used with volumes."

Which route for which app?

• A demo that saves nothing: Netlify, no account, if it's only pages.
• A database for today: Claimable Neon. Claim it within 72 hours, then give the app its new DATABASE_URL.
• A free API that stores nothing: Render Free.
• An app with SQLite, deployed by your agent, with nobody to sign up: Cloudish with a volume.
• Data you can't lose: a person signs up for Railway, Fly.io, or a paid Render service with a disk.

One question to ask your agent

Next time you say "put it online," paste this in too:

Before you deploy, tell me: does this app save anything? If yes, where will it be stored, and what will delete it (a redeploy, a restart, sleeping, an expiry date, or only me)? If I need to claim something to keep it, tell me how long I have.

A good agent answers in a line per question. If yours can't, it picked the route before checking.

And whatever you choose, keep your own copy of anything you can't lose. Have the app export it somewhere else every so often.

Did your data ever vanish after a deploy? Tell us what happened in the comments.

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Written by the team behind Cloudish, at Hal9. Limits and prices as of October 23, 2026.