10 Free Node.js Hosting Websites – How to host your Node.js code for free?

Node.js is an open-source, cross-platform runtime environment for developing server-side and networking applications written in JavaScript. One of the major hurdles faced by developers while working with Node.js is finding a good free hosting platform to host their personal or hobby projects. Especially after Heroku announced dropping their free plan, finding free Node hosting sites or free Node.js hosting services is not easy; there are very few free services out there that let you deploy your Node project without spending a penny. But we’ve done the hard work for you and come up with this list of 10 free websites to host your Node project for free. All you need to do is read on and find out which of these sites suits you best!

Why Should You Host Your Node.js Code for Free?

One of the biggest reasons you should host your Node.js code for free is that it’s a good way to get started and try out different things without having to spend any money. When you’re just getting started with Node.js, it’s easy to make mistakes and run into roadblocks. Instead of trying to fix those problems or hiring someone to fix them for you, it’s often best just to try something else. You can easily switch to a new service at any time if you want to try out something else. Hosting your code for free is also a great way to get comfortable with the process of deploying and managing code on the web. That’s because deploying to a free service is very different from deploying to an on-premises service or to a service where you have dedicated resources.

How to Host Your Node.js Code for Free?

You can host your Node.js code for free in a number of different ways. There are a few websites that provide a free hosting service for Node.js code. You can use these sites to host your code without having to set up your own server. That being said, let us look at 10 of the best free Node.js hosting services you can host your Node.js projects in:

Railway

The railway is a full-fledged deployment platform that aims to streamline the deployment process by eliminating common developer hurdles. It has a very easy and intuitive process for deployment and a very generous free tier for starting out. The free starter plan comes with the following features,

• 512 MB Ram and shared CPU
• 1 GB Disk
• $5 or 500 hours of usage

The starter plan should be more than enough for your personal and hobby projects. Railway also has a dedicated system in place if you’re migrating from Heroku.

Cyclic.sh

Cyclic is another great full-stack deployment with a straightforward and automated deployment process. It has features like No-sleep deployments, integrated databases, log search, serverless cron, instant environment updates, etc. The free tier comes with the following configuration:

• 1 app
• 10,000 API requests
• 1GB runtime memory
• 512MB /tmp storage
• 1GB Object Storage (AWS S3)
• 1GB Database Storage (AWS DynamoDB)
• 3 Cron tasks per app, etc

Qovery

Qovery is a deployment platform with a twist as in it deploys your apps and environments in your AWS account. So, in this case, you’d need an AWS account to use this service, but you can also use the AWS free trial along with this service. The free tier account is free forever and comes with the following features,

• Unlimited Developers
• Up to 1 cluster
• Up to 5 Environments
• Preview Environment in one-click

Render

Render is a unified cloud platform for hosting everything from static sites to backend services, databases, etc. It also has generous limits for all of its hosting plans and comes with features such as free TLS certificates, global CDN, DDoS protection, auto deploys from Git, etc. The free tier for the Services hosting comes with the following configurations,

• 512 MB Ram and shared CPU
• 750 hours of usage
• 400 hours of build time

Codedamn Playgrounds

Playgrounds are not just a hosting platform but a fully-fledged browser-based development environment where you can code and preview your apps within the platform itself. You can also import your existing projects into Glitch and obtain a deployed and public link to your app for free. The free tier of Glitch comes with the following limits,

• Projects and code are public by default
• Full-stack apps sleep after 5 minutes.
• Unlimited always on static sites

One cool thing about playgrounds is you can make changes to your project within the editor, and your changes will be live almost instantly. How convenient!

Vercel

Vercel is a very popular hosting solution with many cutting-edge features and amazing developer experience. Although Vercel focuses on frontend apps, it has built-in support for hosting serverless Node.js functions in the free tier. Also, Vercel can be configured to retain serverful behavior with the help of its Legacy Serverful Behavior.

All-in-all, Vercel is a great hosting platform that is loved by many, and being able also to host Node.js APIs on the platform is a great plus.

EvenNode

EvenNode is another hosting platform dedicated to Node.js and Python hosting. It comes with a great set of features such as a free MongoDB database, WebSocket support, SSL certificates, FTP access, etc. One drawback with EvenNode is that the free plan lasts only 30 days. With the free trial, you can get the following configuration,

• 2 Processes
• 512 MB Ram
• 1 GB Storage
• Free MongoDB database.

Google Cloud Platform

Google Cloud Platform is a well-known cloud provider with a very generous free trial of $300, which you can use for 90 days. It also has a free tier for a lot of its products, and you can see the full breakdown of the limits and features in the free tier here.

However, since it’s not a specialized Node.js hosting solution, you may need to do some additional configurations. Although there is an official guide to getting you started.

AWS

Amazon Web Services or AWS is another massively popular cloud provider which provides short-term free trials and 12 months of free usage for many of its services like,

• 750 hours of Amazon EC2/month
• 5 GB of Amazon S3 storage
• 25 GB of Amazon DynamoDB, and many more.

Microsoft Azure

Last but not least, Microsoft is also a popular cloud provider with a similar free plan. It features 12 months of free usage for most of its popular services and $200 of Azure credits that you can use for a month.

The usage limits for Azure are also very similar to that of AWS and GCP (More detailed breakdown here), so it’s free and safe to choose any of these 3 if you’re opting for a cloud provider.

Conclusion

Now that you know how to host your Node.js code for free and you’ve explored a few of the top free Node.js hosting services, it’s time to get to work! There are a lot of different ways to get started with Node.js. At the end of the day, it’s up to you to decide how you want to implement it and which tools you want to use. Depending on your needs, you can choose to host your code for free using one of the featured providers or use a paid service to get more features.

Thank you for reading!