You can run a real app (frontend, backend, database, edge) without paying a cent in 2026. Here are the best free tiers and how to assemble them into a complete $0 stack.
Frontend & full-stack hosting
- Vercel (Hobby): free, no card; great for Next.js and frontend apps (personal / non-commercial use).
- Cloudflare: Workers (100,000 requests/day free), Pages, plus KV, D1 and R2 free allowances with zero egress fees on R2.
- Render: a free web-service tier (no card) plus a free Postgres instance; free services spin down when idle.
- Koyeb / Northflank: free service tiers for small apps and platform evaluation.
Databases & storage (free, no card)
- Neon: a permanent free Postgres plan with branching; commercial use allowed.
- Turso: free SQLite / libSQL with a generous read allowance.
- Upstash: free serverless Redis.
- Convex: a free reactive backend/database tier.
Big-cloud free tiers
- Oracle Cloud Always Free: the most generous permanent free tier: Arm cores, RAM, storage and an Autonomous Database, plus a $300 trial credit.
- DigitalOcean and OVHcloud: around $200 in signup credits for new accounts.
The current list (including which require a card) is in the Perkstack catalog.
A complete $0 stack
- Frontend: Vercel Hobby or Cloudflare Pages.
- Backend / functions: Cloudflare Workers or Render.
- Database: Neon Postgres (add pgvector for RAG, see free vector databases).
- Cache / queue: Upstash Redis.
- AI: a free LLM tier (Gemini, Cerebras), see how to use AI for free.
That covers a full product before a single invoice.
Bottom line
Between these free tiers you can ship and even get early traction at $0. Create a free Perkstack account to track every free tier, credit and the cheapest paid options for when you scale.