1,000 credits/month; extra 500-credit packs cost $5.
- Free option
- Free: 300 credits per month with a hard stop. Commercial use is allowed; enough for a small site with modest traffic and few production deploys.
- Why it fits
- Static sites and frontend apps that deploy from Git and want a generous, mature workflow.
- How deploys work
- Connect the Git repo; pushes build and deploy automatically with previews for every pull request.
- The tradeoff
- The credit system makes bills hard to predict — traffic, deploys, and compute all drain one pool.
- The managed database bills on top of this estimate.
Move to Standard ($25, 1 CPU / 2 GB) if 512 MB gets tight; a managed database adds more.
- Free option
- Hobby workspace: $0 — static sites, free web services (0.1 CPU, 512 MB), a 30-day free Postgres, a 25 MB free key-value store, 5 GB bandwidth, 500 build minutes, 1 seat.
- Why it fits
- Apps and APIs that want git-push deploys with a fixed, understandable instance price.
- How deploys work
- Connect the Git repo; Render builds and deploys on push, with Docker support and instant rollbacks.
- The tradeoff
- The workspace-plus-services model means several line items, and bandwidth overage is pricey.
- The managed database bills on top of this estimate.
Includes 150 GiB of transfer; a managed database adds more.
- Free option
- Free tier: 3 apps with static sites, 1 GiB of outbound transfer each per month. Extra static-site apps cost $3/month.
- Why it fits
- Apps that want git-push deploys inside a provider they can grow with.
- How deploys work
- Connect the Git repo or a container image; App Platform builds, deploys, and scales it.
- The tradeoff
- Weaker compute per dollar than a Droplet — the convenience premium is real.
- The managed database bills on top of this estimate.
