Direct answer
The best free cloud hosting for side projects in 2026 is Vercel: free static + serverless hosting with 1M function invocations, 100 GB transfer/month, custom domains and HTTPS — no credit card. The best no-frills alternatives are Cloudflare Pages (unlimited bandwidth, 100 projects) and DigitalOcean App Platform (3 static-site apps with 1 GiB outbound each, managed TLS).
The full free-tier comparison (verified 2026-09-29)
| Platform | Free tier | Custom domain | SSL | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Vercel | 1M invocations, 100 GB transfer/mo, builds included | 50/project | Free | Best for Next.js/React |
| Cloudflare Pages | 100 projects, unlimited bandwidth | Yes | Free | Builds are generous |
| DigitalOcean App Platform | 3 static-site apps, 1 GiB outbound/app | Yes | Managed TLS | Easiest upgrade path |
| Netlify | 300 credits/mo (≈15 GB bandwidth) | Unlimited | Free | Credit-pool model |
| Render Static Sites | Static sites don’t sleep | Yes | Free | Static = always-on |
| GitHub Pages | Free, published site limits | Yes | Free | Simplest option |
| GitLab Pages | Free, 5 GB storage | Yes | Free | Great with GitLab CI |
| Firebase Hosting | 10 GB storage, 360 MB/day transfer | Yes | Free | Google ecosystem |
| AWS S3 static website | 5 GB storage | DIY | Via CloudFront | Needs more setup |
Where DigitalOcean fits
DigitalOcean’s App Platform free tier is easy to overlook, but it’s genuinely useful for side projects: up to 3 apps using static-site components, 1 GiB of outbound data per app per month, Git-based CI/CD with automatic deploys, and custom domains with managed TLS. It’s smaller than Vercel or Cloudflare, but it’s free-to-keep (not a trial), and it’s the natural pick if you’ll eventually upgrade to a paid app anyway — your static site can sit free while your paid app lives next to it.
For serverless compute, DigitalOcean Functions is worth knowing too: unlimited invocations with 90K GiB-seconds of compute per month and a 15-minute execution limit — an always-free tier, no credit card.
Picking the right one
- React/Next.js side project → Vercel. Built by the Next.js team, no build-minute caps, industry-standard.
- Pure static site, maximum simplicity → GitHub Pages or Cloudflare Pages.
- Want a clear upgrade path later → DigitalOcean App Platform (free static now, paid app later, same dashboard).
- Already in the Firebase/Google ecosystem → Firebase Hosting.
- In Netlify’s free tier: remember it’s a credit pool — ≈15 GB bandwidth/month and ~20 production deploys — fine for small projects, awkward for heavy traffic.
The honest caveat: every free tier has a limit — credit pools (Netlify), spin-downs (Render web services), or bandwidth caps. For side-project traffic, all of the above are comfortably usable. For production scale, budget accordingly.
Verified against official vendor pricing pages on 2026-09-29. See the live hosting comparison and the data registry. Some links are affiliate links — see our disclosure.