Render

Who it is for

For developers and individuals. It runs on the web. License: Proprietary. It is in the Infrastructure group.

What you pay

Free plan: A Hobby workspace is $0 a month plus compute. A Free web service is $0, with 512 MB of RAM, and it spins down after 15 minutes without traffic. Free web services cannot attach a persistent disk. Free Postgres expires 30 days after creation and is limited to 1 GB. A cron job has a $1 monthly minimum. The smallest listed rate is $0.00016 a minute for 512 MB. Hosted price: Hobby is $0 a month plus compute. A Free web service is $0. The next web service is $7 a month. Checked November 11, 2026. Persistent disks are $0.25 per GB a month and are not available on Free web services. Hobby includes 5 GB of bandwidth, then $0.15 per GB. The workspace plan does not remove Free instance limits. It does not run on a computer you control. Services run on Render. This listing did not find an install of the platform.

How to switch

• Compared with Val Town. Its price on file: Billing paused on November 10, 2026. Existing subscriptions are serviced free. A prepaid annual plan gets a partial refund. The post does not print a dollar price.

  What you give up: store a file or a blob and edit the code in the browser. You only get part of: a SQLite database for the app.

  Free alternatives to Val Town

How close is it?

A full score means it matches our checklist. It is not a drop-in replacement.

• 73
  Instead of Val Town7 of 7 checked features. A full score means it matches our checklist. It is not a drop-in replacement.What you give up: store a file or a blob and edit the code in the browser. You only get part of: a SQLite database for the app.A web service is a public URL. The free-instance doc says Free web services spin down after 15 minutes and take about a minute to start again.The pricing page lists Node as a runtime. It does not name TypeScript. A TypeScript app is a Node build you bring, and it is a long-running service.Cron jobs run a command on a UTC cron expression. Billing has a $1 monthly minimum. A cron job cannot use a persistent disk, and Render stops a run after 12 hours.There is no managed SQLite. A paid web service can attach a disk. The free-instance doc says a local SQLite file on a Free service is lost on spin-down, and Free services cannot attach a disk.The pricing page lists disks, Postgres, and Key Value. It does not list object storage. A disk is not a blob store, and cron jobs cannot mount one.The pricing table includes environment variables and secret files on Hobby, including for cron jobs. The cron doc says a cron job can set variables such as a database URL.You connect a Git repo or a Docker image. The pages checked here do not show a browser editor for the app.

Related alternatives

Infrastructure alternatives

• Free alternatives to Auth0
• Free alternatives to Glitch
• Free alternatives to Heroku
• Free alternatives to Val Town
• Authelia: Two-factor login in front of your apps.
• Authentik: An identity provider with an MIT core.

Free apps in this group

• Authelia: Two-factor login in front of your apps.
• Authentik: An identity provider with an MIT core.
• CapRover: A PaaS with a web UI and Let's Encrypt.
• Cloudflare Workers: TypeScript on Cloudflare's network, with cron, D1, and R2. The free plan allows 10 ms of CPU.
• Coolify: A place you run yourself for apps and databases.
• Dokku: A small PaaS on one Linux host.
• Keycloak: Hosted login, OIDC, SAML, and a user directory.
• Kubero: A PaaS panel on Kubernetes.
• Netlify Functions: TypeScript functions, scheduled functions, and blobs. The built-in database is Postgres.
• SuperTokens: Login recipes with an Apache core.
• Vercel Functions: TypeScript functions, cron, and Blob on Vercel. Hobby cron runs once a day. No SQLite product.
• Windmill: An AGPL script runner with a web IDE, schedules, and webhooks. Not a site host.
• YunoHost: A server distribution with an app catalog.
• Zitadel: An identity server written in Go.

Where we looked

• https://render.com/pricing
• https://docs.render.com/free
• https://docs.render.com/cronjobs