Seven platforms in 2026 will host a Node.js app for free without asking for a credit card.
A WebSocket server, a background worker, and a CPU-heavy handler each fit some free tiers much more comfortably than others. This post will help you match each platform to the kind of Node work it handles well.
Vercel
Vercel Hobby is free for personal, non-commercial projects and is built around HTTP serverless functions and static frontends. Node.js is the primary runtime, and Vercel does a lot of Next.js-specific work for you automatically: caching pages that don't change often, running lightweight functions close to the user, resizing images, and running middleware on every request. Hobby includes 100 GB of bandwidth per month, 1 million function invocations, 4 CPU-hours of Active CPU time, and a 300-second function timeout, which is enough for a real small project.
The tradeoff is architectural because Vercel doesn't run long-lived Node processes on any tier, so anything that needs a persistent WebSocket connection, a background worker, or a queue consumer isn't what Vercel is designed for. For a Next.js frontend with a handful of API routes, no other platform on this list wires up as much of the framework for you automatically.
Netlify
Netlify has a free tier aimed at static frontends with Node-powered serverless functions. Sites deploy from a Git repository, and the free plan includes 100 GB of bandwidth per month, 300 build minutes, and 125,000 serverless function invocations. The functions run on a Node.js runtime with a 10-second default timeout (26 seconds on paid tiers) and are suitable for API routes, form handlers, webhook receivers, and other short-lived request work.
Like Vercel, Netlify is designed around serverless rather than long-running Node servers, so the free tier fits a static-plus-API shape more naturally than a full backend. For a static frontend with API routes, the free allowances may be enough to cover a real site.
Cloudflare Workers and Pages
Cloudflare Workers runs your code in a lightweight JavaScript sandbox instead of a full Node.js runtime, so it starts fast and uses very little memory. Turning on the nodejs_compat flag brings in enough Node APIs and popular npm packages to make it a real option for Node code. The free tier includes 100,000 requests per day, 10 ms of CPU time per invocation, and requests served from Cloudflare's global network without extra charges for data leaving the platform. Cloudflare Pages sits alongside for static hosting on the same free tier.
Anything that depends on compiled C code (image tools like sharp, password hashing like bcrypt, Prisma's native database engine) will not run here, and each Worker is capped at 128 MB of memory, shared across all concurrent requests. Inside those constraints, sub-50 ms cold starts and global edge distribution mean requests are answered from a data center near the user, without you configuring regions or paying for multi-region deployment.
Suga
Suga runs always-on Node.js containers on a free tier that includes one project, 0.5 vCPU, 1 GiB of memory, and 5 GB of storage. Node applications deploy from a Git repository, are composed on a visual canvas alongside optional container templates for PostgreSQL, Redis, and MariaDB, and run behind a global edge network which handles caching, HTTPS certificates, and attack protection out of the box.
Because the runtime is a Docker container rather than a serverless function, long-running Node processes work naturally: background workers, WebSocket servers, and services that talk to each other by name. For exercising a small Node backend end-to-end, the free tier gives you a full-featured environment. The free tier covers one project at a time, and Pro extends the same canvas when you're building more.
Render
Render offers a free web service tier for Node applications, with 512 MB of memory and 0.1 CPU, that spins down after 15 minutes of inactivity and cold-starts on the next request. Deploys are Git-driven, native runtimes handle most Node versions without a Dockerfile, one-click rollback works on all tiers, and preview environments are available with their own resource billing.
The free tier's cold-start behavior is the shape it's designed for: a personal project, a demo, or a portfolio site where a first-request delay is acceptable. Free Postgres is available for 30 days before it expires, so long-lived data on the free tier is something to think about.
Railway
Railway doesn't have a permanently free plan, but sign-ups get a one-time $5 credit with no credit card required. For a small always-on Node container, that credit lasts roughly a month before the balance hits zero and the app pauses until you top up.
Inside that window, Railway is push-to-deploy from Git or a Dockerfile, long-lived Node processes like WebSocket servers and background workers run in a container so they behave naturally, and a Postgres or Redis can be provisioned in a few clicks. The $5 credit and no-credit-card sign-up match what a lot of people mean by "free hosting" for a first deploy, just with a shorter runway than the other options on this list.
Deno Deploy
Deno Deploy is Deno's edge platform, and its Node.js compatibility layer covers a broad range of npm packages so plenty of Node code runs unmodified. The free tier includes 1 million requests per month, 100 GB of outbound bandwidth, and up to 20 active deployments, all served from a global edge network. The 50 ms CPU budget per request suits lightweight work like proxying requests or returning JSON, rather than heavier work like image processing or hashing passwords at production strength. Note that Deno Deploy Classic (dash.deno.com) is being retired on July 20, 2026, so new projects should start on the current platform at console.deno.com.
The Node compat is real but incomplete, so packages with C bindings or deep filesystem assumptions won't work. For TypeScript-first Node code or code that ports cleanly from Node to Deno, it's a legitimate free hosting option.
Free-tier limits and pricing were valid at time of writing (July 2026). These change often, so check the linked platform pages before committing.
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