Render

Free web services sleep — static sites do not

Render is the closest thing to "Heroku, but still pleasant." Commercial use is allowed on every plan, including free. The one rule to internalise: free web services spin down after 15 minutes of inactivity and cold-start on the next request — the wake-up takes roughly a minute, so the first visitor after idle waits or sees a failure. Free web services also share a pool of 750 instance-hours per month. Free static sites, by contrast, are always on.

Practical implications

• For a real product with unpredictable traffic, a free web service is a demo tool, not production — the cold start will hit real users. Upgrade to a paid instance to keep it warm.
• Cron jobs are a paid feature; the free tier does not run scheduled tasks.
• Render gives you a normal long-running process (unlike edge runtimes), so existing Node/Python/Go apps move over with little change.

When to choose it

Choose Render when you want a traditional always-on container PaaS with a gentle learning curve. It competes directly with Railway and Fly.io — Render keeps a true free tier, Railway bills by usage, Fly.io is pay-as-you-go; see the comparison.