Hosting Node.js applications is easy, finding a completely free Node.js hosting service that is reliable is not. In this post, we will discuss 3 hosting services where you can host your Node.js applications or API for free which you should start using now. We will also deploy a demo app step-by-step on each of these 3 platforms. I wished to have found more than 3 but finding even 3 was not very easy.
Table of contents #
- Free Node.js Hosting options
- Prerequisites
- Free Node.js hosting services
- Issues with these services
- Free Node.js hosting platforms to deploy your app
- Quick comparison of Free Node.js hosting services
- Other options for free Node.js hosting
- Conclusion
Free Node.js Hosting options #
This post is about services where you can host your Node.js application completely free, yes for $0 a month. Of course, when you don’t pay anything you will need to make some trade-offs. Still, this is not a list with just a couple of free options and a bulk of paid alternatives like the other posts I have seen and read.
I have tried all of the 3 services on my own and they work pretty well for demo and small-sized applications.
Needless to say, we would not use a free service to host a medium-sized or a production-level application. All of these 3 main services DO NOT ask for your credit card even for backup purposes so keep them inside your wallets.
I will include 3+ other services that ask for credit cards or have pretty inexpensive plans towards the end to make the list a bit more comprehensive.
Prerequisites #
All 3 of these services that we are going to look at in the next sections. Before we dive into actually deploying our Node.js applications below are some prerequisites:
- You have a GitHub account and know how to fork repositories
- Your application code is available on GitHub
- You are able to add third-party applications to your GitHub account.
Time to start revealing our free Node.js hosting services:
Free Node.js hosting services #
The free Node.js hosting services are Render (free tier), Vercel (hobby free forever plan), and Cyclic. All these services can host your Node.js application for $0 a month a.k.a. absolutely and completely free. You don't even need to add a credit card for backup or safety reasons. But there are strings attached, as discussed next.
Issues with these services #
Render apps sleep if they are inactive for 15 minutes.
Or you can use something like Cron-Job.org to ping your Render service every 10 minutes to keep it awake. Render apps might take up to 30 seconds to respond after sleeping.
Vercel is an amazing service, where you could host both your backend API and frontend application in the same repository. It focuses more on the frontend side of things.
The downside is that Vercel uses serverless functions. It is like a great wrapper on top of AWS Lambda. It only allows personal GitHub repositories for free, not organizational ones.
With serverless functions, the issues of cold start and losing application state comes into the picture.
Cyclic is another awesome service where the app does not sleep if you don’t get requests for 30 minutes. It is serverless and a great wrapper on top of multiple AWS services.
Well, that is still better than the above two options if you only have only one coding challenge to deploy.
Free Node.js hosting platforms to deploy your app #
Ok, let’s cut the rant and get to deploying a demo application. For this illustration I will use A node.js Express API that talks with a PostgreSQL database on ElephantSQL.
This is a simple quotes API and you can find the code open-source on Github. Time to see this app hosted for free on Render.
Render #
Render is a relatively new company that used to provide only static hosting for free. Now it provides an array of free servcies including Node.js and Docker hosting. The pricing page lists static site, services, PostgreSQL and Redis for free. There is a catch for PostgreSQL though, it runs free for 90 days only.
Render has one of the smoothest developer experience and deploy the Node.js app was a breeze.
It also has comprehensive docs to help you deploy not only Node.js apps for free but a host of other languages and frameworks. Some other things you can deploy on Render are Python, Go, PHP (Laravel) and Docker. You can also host other Node.js alternatives on Render like Deno and Bun.js.
Deploy Node.js Quotes API to Render #
You will need a free account on Render to get started. After you have registered with your preferred method like Github or Email, please follow the steps below to run your Node.js app on Render:
- Login to your Render account
- On the Dashboard under "Web Services" click "New Web Service" as seen below:
- Then paste
https://github.com/geshan/nodejs-posgresqlat the bottom on the next screen and click "Continue" as seen here:
- After that on the next page, type in
nodejs-postgresqlas the Name of the app, select the Environment as "Node".
- On the same page, make sure the build command is
npm installand the start command isnpm start. Also make sure the plan isFree. Then click the blue button at the end of the page "Create Web Service"
- It will take a some minutes to build and deploy, you will see an output like the below:
- Your application's URL will be visible under the name of the app, click it to check if your app is running. If you click the app while it is being deployed the first time, it will come back with a
404response. It will take some time to come alive. Then if you hit<YOUR-APP-URL>/quotesyou will see something like:
That was easy to get your Node.js app up and running pretty fast. Next, let’s look at how to deploy the same application on Vercel.
Vercel #
Vercel (previously known as Zeit) is a great place to deploy frontend apps. Being a layer on top of serverless functions it can also run some other languages and Node.js is included in that list. Amongst other good features, a very handy feature with Vercel is you get a unique URL for each pull request which makes testing that particular branch a breeze. They call this deploy preview.
Vercel Pricing is pretty straight forward. Personal projects run free and it integrates with GitHub, BitBucket, and GitLab.
Let's look at how we can deploy our Quotes API Node.js app on Vercel.
Deploy Node.js Quotes API on Vercel #
After you have registered with Vercel and are logged into Vercel, do the following steps:
- Visit https://github.com/geshan/nodejs-posgresql (you don’t even need to fork the repo)
- Click on the blue “Deploy” button
- Give it a name in the Vercel UI like below:
- And click "Continue"
- You can create your own repo on Github from the screen below:
- After that, select the root as the project’s source code, then click “Continue”
- Subsequently, click deploy in the next screen:
- It will build and deploy the app and you will see a screen like below:
- Now, click the “Visit” button, you should see something like the following:
- Add
/quotesto the URL and you should see the quotes in a JSON format like below:
This is set up very well now, you should go to the app’s settings page if you want to tweak anything. You can add environment variables and do other things in the settings. You can even look at the function’s logs.
Each time you open a new pull request in that repository Vercel will give you a deploy preview URL which is very handy. You can see how it looks like below:
On merge to master/main branch, it will auto-deploy the code to the main URL. You can use the Vercel CLI for re-deployments, setting up environment variables, and a host of other things.
Vercel has a powerful CLI to make your life easier for deploying the apps and doing other things like having a look at the app logs from the CLI.
Next, let's look at how Cyclic compares to Render and Vercel.
Cyclic #
Cyclic aims to be a servive that offers full stack services for free. It is a serverless wrapper built very well on top of AWS. As it says on its website
Connect your nodejs github repo, let us build, deploy and manage the hosting. Authorize our github app and you will have a fully featured software pipeline.
As mentioned its pricing page, which has a self claimed generous free tier we can deploy one app which can be invoked 10K times in a month. It also has some hard and soft limits mentioined in the limits page.
Deploy Node.js Quotes API to Cyclic #
Given you have registered on to Cyclic with GitHub and you are logged in, follow the steps below:
- Fork the
https://github.com/geshan/nodejs-posgresqlrepository to your GitHub account - Go to your fork and click the "Deploy to cyclic" navy blue button
- You will be asked to connect Cyclic with GitHub, you can approve the repo as below
- Subsequently, Cyclic will build and deploy the app and show you "You're Live!" in a couple of minutes maximum, when the process is done as follows:
- Now we can click on the "Go to nodejs-posgresql Dashboard" button. It will take us to the overview page like below:
- To view the working app click the "App URL" link, which will show something like:
- Next, add
/quotesto the URL and you should see something similar to the following:
There you have it, the same Node.js API deployed on all 3 free Node.js hosting services without even needing to reach your wallet for your credit card.
Quick comparison of Free Node.js hosting services #
Below is a quick comparison table for Render, Vercel, and Cyclic.
| Feature/Service | CPU | Memory | Sleeps on no activity? | Is FAAS/Serverless? | No. of apps? |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Render | N/A | N/A | After 15 mins | No | 5 |
| Vercel | N/A | 1 GB | No | Yes | Unlimited |
| Cyclic | N/A | 1 GB | No | Yes | Multiple |
After that contrast, let’s look at some other options that are free but still ask for your credit card as a backup option that they can charge if you use more resources.
Other options for free Node.js hosting #
Some other services where you can host your Node.js application free/almost free but you need to put your credit card are as follows:
- Railway - Railway is a great service with free $5 a month. We can even run a database on Railway without adding a credit card.
- Koyeb - Koyeb is another useful service that gives $5 a month. We can run Containers as well on it.
- Fly.io - Pretty good, it is like CDN for the backend. The free plan has 3 shared-CPU-1x VMs with 256 MB of RAM. Asks for a credit-card on registration.
- Google Cloud Run - You can host your Node.js app on Google Cloud Run as serverless containers. You can get up to 2 million requests per month free. But it will involve setting up Google Cloud Registry and other tools. Part of Google Cloud Platform which asks for a credit card on registration.
- Glitch - Glitch can host one of your Node.js Apps for free. It is better used to code collaboratively than host a Node.js app or API.
You can host your Node.js App on all 3 of the big cloud providers AWS, Azure, and GCP and/or their function as a service (FAAS) serverless options or even on free-forever VM. But, they will ask for your credit-card.
You can even explore other cloud providers like IBM Cloud or Alibaba to host your Node.js app for $0 a month. Heroku will sunset it's free plan soon. I will leave the digging deeper part for you.
If your app needs a database, you can also use Postgres with Docker or use free services like ElephantSQL or Neon.tech.
Conclusion #
Hosting a small test project with Node.js should not be a hassle.
You should be able to do it easily with any of the above 3 services that give it absolutely free.
You can also use the other services that give it for free but ask you to put down your credit card number. The choice is yours!