Static Site Hosting: Free Tiers and Where They End
Published · updated · 4 min read
Key takeaways
- Cloudflare Pages has unlimited bandwidth on its free plan, which the others do not.
- Vercel's Hobby plan is free but bandwidth and function overages are charged.
- Netlify's free tier limits build minutes and function runtime.
- Hostinger is cheap to start at about $2.99/mo but renews sharply higher.
- Bandwidth metering is the difference between a free site and a surprise invoice.
The ranking at a glance
| # | Tool | Pricing | Twinover Score |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Vercel | freemium | 9.0 |
| 2 | Cloudflare Pages | freemium | 8.8 |
| 3 | Netlify | freemium | 8.6 |
| 4 | Hostinger | subscription | 7.8 |
What the free tier measures
Static hosting is cheap to provide, so the free tiers are generous on files and stingy on the expensive parts: bandwidth, build time and serverless function calls. Cloudflare Pages does not meter bandwidth at all on its free plan, which is a genuinely different proposition from Vercel and Netlify, both of which cap it.
- Cloudflare Pages: unlimited bandwidth, Workers Paid from $5/mo
- Vercel: Hobby free, Pro $20/user/mo, overages billed
- Netlify: free tier with build-minute limits, Pro $19/member/mo
- Hostinger: shared hosting from about $2.99/mo on long terms
The bill that arrives on a good day
A post that takes off is the failure mode of metered hosting. Bandwidth charges and function invocations scale with traffic, so the site that goes viral is the site that costs money — often from a plan you did not choose. If you cannot predict your traffic, unlimited bandwidth is worth more than any developer experience feature.
Developer experience is where Vercel and Netlify earn
Vercel's zero-config deploys, preview URLs per pull request and edge network make it the fastest way to ship a modern front-end, and it is the natural home for Next.js. Netlify's build pipeline, forms and identity add-ons do a similar job with a slightly different emphasis. Both are worth their Pro pricing — $20/user/mo and $19/member/mo respectively — when a team is shipping daily.
When a traditional host is the right answer
If you need PHP, a database, email or WordPress, shared hosting is simpler and cheaper than assembling the modern stack. Hostinger's promo pricing from about $2.99/mo is very cheap to enter, with a free domain on annual plans. The two caveats are that renewal prices jump sharply and shared-server performance has a ceiling.
The constraint nobody advertises
Cloudflare Pages runs on the Workers runtime, which is not Node — some packages and libraries do not work as they would on a normal server, and the documentation is spread across products. It is not a blocker, but it is the reason a migration that looked trivial took a week.
Choosing by what you are actually shipping
A documentation site, blog or portfolio: Cloudflare Pages, because bandwidth is unmetered and the cost stays at zero. A Next.js app with a team shipping often: Vercel. A marketing site needing forms and auth without extra services: Netlify. Anything running WordPress or a database: Hostinger or another traditional host.
Frequently asked questions
- Is there really free hosting with unlimited bandwidth?
- Cloudflare Pages does not meter bandwidth on its free plan, which is unusual — Vercel and Netlify both cap bandwidth and bill for overage. Cloudflare's paid tier is Workers Paid at $5/mo, which is a low ceiling to reach.
- Why did my hosting bill jump suddenly?
- Most modern hosts meter bandwidth and serverless function calls, so a traffic spike bills automatically rather than blocking the site. The fix is either a plan with a hard cap you control or a host that does not meter bandwidth at all.
- Is Hostinger good enough for a small business site?
- For a WordPress or PHP site with modest traffic, yes — intro pricing from about $2.99/mo is very cheap and includes a free domain on annual plans. Watch the renewal price, which is much higher, and expect shared-server limits as traffic grows.
- Vercel or Netlify for a small team?
- Vercel if you are building in Next.js or want the tightest preview-deploy workflow. Netlify if you want built-in forms and identity without wiring extra services. Their free tiers are similar; both meter build time and bandwidth.