Free Backend Hosting in 2026: Sleep, Expiry and Credit Card Rules Compared

Free backend hosting in 2026 comes in three shapes: apps that sleep when idle and wake on the next request, monthly credits that run out, and trials that end. Truly free, always-on hosting for production is almost gone. Heroku and Fly.io no longer have free tiers for new users, and Koyeb now asks new users for a paid plan. Below are the nine platforms people ask about most, with the three rules that decide whether a free tier works for you: sleep, database expiry and credit card.

Free backend hosting compared#

The three things that decide if a free tier works#

1. Does the app sleep?#

A sleeping app is scaled to zero after a period without traffic, and the next request wakes it. That's perfect for demos, portfolios and student projects. It's a problem for bots, queue workers and webhooks that need an instant reply, because there's no request to wake them, or the first one is slow.

• Render spins free web services down after 15 minutes without inbound traffic.
• DockHosting puts Free apps to sleep after 1 hour without visits and shows a "Waking up" page instead of an error while it starts.
• Northflank's sandbox doesn't sleep, but it's meant for experiments, not production.

If your backend is a Discord bot, read why bots need an always-on host. If it's a Telegram bot, webhooks make sleeping fine.

2. Does the free database expire?#

This is the rule people discover too late. Render's free Postgres expires 30 days after creation, then gives you 14 days to upgrade before it's deleted (see what to do when it expires). Heroku, Fly.io and DigitalOcean App Platform don't include a free database at all.

DockHosting's free database doesn't pause and doesn't expire. It's 500 MB on the Free plan, reached over a private network through DATABASE_URL. It can be PostgreSQL, MySQL, MariaDB, MongoDB, Redis or ClickHouse.

3. Do you need a credit card?#

No card is needed for DockHosting Free, Northflank's sandbox or Railway's trial. Render doesn't list a card as required for free services, though a workspace without a payment method has free services suspended for the rest of the month if it goes over its bandwidth. Fly.io needs a card after its 7-day trial, and Koyeb asks new sign-ups for a payment method.

Platform by platform#

DockHosting (our product)#

• Free: 2 projects, 1 managed database, 512 MB of memory shared by the app and its database, and a .dockhosting.cloud subdomain with HTTPS. Deploy with dock deploy or from GitHub.
• Limits: apps sleep after 1 hour idle. There are no custom domains, persistent storage or backups on Free, and it runs in one region (eu-central-1).
• When you outgrow it: Hobby is $4/month for always-on apps, 1 GB of memory, your own domain and daily backups. Pricing is flat, with no bandwidth metering.

Render#

• Free: web services with 512 MB and 0.1 CPU that spin down after 15 minutes, with 750 instance hours per workspace per month. Free Postgres has 1 GB of storage and expires after 30 days.
• Paid: Starter is $7/month (512 MB) and Postgres starts at $6. More in Render vs Railway vs Fly.io.

Railway#

• Free: a one-time $5 trial for 30 days, then a Free plan with $1 of credit per month (0.5 GB RAM).
• Paid: Hobby is $5/month including $5 of usage, then billed by RAM and CPU. Databases run as services at the same rates. See Railway alternatives.

Northflank#

• Free: the Developer Sandbox: 2 services, 2 jobs, 1 database or addon, and up to $20/month of resources, always on, with no card needed. Northflank says it shouldn't be used for production.

Fly.io#

• Free: no free tier for new organizations, only a 7-day trial with $1 of credit. Always-on VMs start at $2.19/month (256 MB), and Managed Postgres starts at $38.

Heroku#

• Free: none. Eco dynos are $5 and sleep after 30 minutes. The cheapest always-on dyno is Basic at $7, and Postgres starts at $5. See Heroku alternatives.

DigitalOcean App Platform#

• Free: up to 3 static sites. Backends start at $5/month (512 MiB), and a dev database is $7.

Koyeb#

• In February 2026, Koyeb announced it was joining Mistral AI and that the Starter plan would be removed. New users need a paid plan (Pro from $29/month) and a payment method.

Vercel#

• Free: the Hobby plan runs serverless functions for personal, non-commercial use. There's no always-on server, and Vercel Postgres is no longer offered. Where to host the backend for a Vercel frontend.

Which free backend host should you pick?#

• A student project, portfolio or demo with a database: DockHosting Free. The app sleeps when nobody's using it, and the database stays.
• An API that people use all day: a free tier that sleeps will feel slow. Budget $4–7/month for always-on.
• A Discord bot or queue worker: it needs always-on. Northflank's sandbox for experiments, or a paid plan for anything real.
• A Telegram bot or webhook receiver: a sleeping app is fine, because each update wakes it.
• Just testing for a week: any trial works. Watch out for what gets deleted afterwards.

How to start on DockHosting's free plan#

curl -fsSL https://cli.dockhosting.dev/install.sh | sh   # Windows: irm https://cli.dockhosting.dev/install.ps1 | iex
dock login
dock deploy

Then attach a database in the dashboard and read DATABASE_URL. Guides for each stack: Node.js, Django, FastAPI, Flask, Express + MongoDB, Spring Boot and any Dockerfile.