Render deploys static sites and web services in one workspace. It suits a small app that can tolerate sleep on a free web instance.
As of 2026-10, the Hobby workspace is $0/month and free web instances share 750 hours per workspace per calendar month. A Starter web instance begins at $7/month; the Pro workspace is $25/month plus compute. Hobby includes 5 GB outbound traffic; extra public egress is $0.15/GB.
Free web instances sleep after 15 idle minutes and the next request may take about a minute to start. The 750 hours are shared rather than granted per service. The demo tracks total workspace instance hours.
When to use
Use Render when free-instance sleep is acceptable; compare Railway for metered always-on resources and Cloud Run for scale-to-zero containers.