Render, Railway, Vercel Free Tier Limits Explained

The "Free Tier" illusion often traps developers. What looks like infinite free hosting frequently masks severe restrictions meant to push you onto a pricey subscription plan. Here’s exactly what these providers limit.

Vercel's Bandwidth and Functions

Vercel's hobby tier excels for static sites. But beware of images and serverless functions (like hitting an API route attached to a database). Vercel caps serverless function execution. If you host a Next.js app that dynamically calls a database frequently, you may hit the dreaded "Hobby execution limit" midway through the month.

Render's "Spin Down" Sleep Rule

Render's generous free web service isn't "always on". If your web app doesn't receive HTTP traffic for 15 minutes, the container spins down. The next user to visit has to wait up to a minute for a "Cold Boot". Secondly, free tiers cannot run persistent background workers.

Railway's $5 Limit

Railway no longer provides infinite free hosting. They give you a one-time $5 credit pool for a "Trial" tier. Once your container utilizes that compute limit over a month or two, the container is permanently stopped until you bind a credit card.

The Remoud Alternative

Remoud approaches things differently. Our Hobby tier maintains an 'always-on' container without aggressive sleeping policies, and features unmetered HTTP bandwidth. It's built for developers who need reliable, 24/7 side projects.