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What decides the real cost
Whether you can use your own domain, or you are stuck on a branded subdomain.
Whether the host injects ads onto your pages.
The resource limits: storage, bandwidth, database size, PHP execution time.
Whether there is any path to upgrade without rebuilding.
Plans and renewal prices, side by side
Every price and spec below comes from our provider data, checked September 2026. Full detail is on each host’s review page.
| Host | From | Sites | Storage | Free SSL |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cloudflare Pages | Free · Static and Jamstack only. Your own domain, a global CDN, no ads. No PHP or database. | |||
| GitHub Pages | Free · Static sites from a Git repo. Custom domain and HTTPS. No server-side code. | |||
| Hostinger | $2.99/mo | 25 | 25 GB SSD | Yes |
Our best-value picks, ranked
Cloudflare Pages
Free static and Jamstack hosting on Cloudflare's global network with your own domain, no ads and no real traffic limit; the catch is it does not run PHP or a database.
From Free
Static and Jamstack only. Your own domain, a global CDN, no ads. No PHP or database.
GitHub Pages
Free static hosting straight from a Git repo with a custom domain and HTTPS, ideal for a portfolio, docs or a landing page.
From Free
Static sites from a Git repo. Custom domain and HTTPS. No server-side code.
Not free, but the paid plans that free hosting users graduate to start at $2.99/mo, so the real question is when the free tier stops being enough.
From $2.99/mo (48-month term)renews $10.99/mo25 GB SSD9 datacenter regions
Best for: New blogs, small business sites and first WordPress installs
Budget-hosting mistakes to avoid
The errors we see people make, and how to avoid each one.
Building a WordPress site on a free shared tier
Free WordPress hosting from InfinityFree, 000webhost and similar puts hard caps on database size, PHP execution time and daily hits, blocks common plugins, and can suspend the account without warning. A site you care about should not live there. Static hosting is the only free tier worth building on.
Not planning the move off the subdomain
If you start on yoursite.hostprovider.com and build links and bookmarks to it, moving to your own domain later means redirects and lost link equity. Register a domain first (about $10) and point the free host at it if it allows, or use Cloudflare Pages which supports custom domains free.
Treating a free trial as free hosting
Some 'free hosting' results are 30-day trials or free-with-a-paid-domain deals. Read what happens on day 31. A genuine free tier (Cloudflare Pages, GitHub Pages, Netlify's free plan) has no end date.
How we scored these hosts
We keep a data sheet of every provider in the comparison: current intro and renewal pricing, datacenter locations, storage, backups and money-back terms, each with the sources we checked it against. The ranking on this page is our judgement about which of those providers fits free web hosting best, weighted by the criteria above. A provider only appears once its current data is verified; where we could not confirm a number, that host is left off rather than guessed.
Learn the fundamentals behind this comparison
Plain-English guides to the parts of hosting that decide whether a plan performs for this use case or falls over.
- Intro Price vs Renewal Price: The Hosting Discount TrapAlmost every shared host advertises a low first-term price and renews well above it. The headline number is a discount to win you. The renewal is what you pay for most of the time you own the site.
- Shared vs VPS vs Cloud vs Dedicated Hosting: How to ChooseThe four hosting types are really one question: how much of a server is yours, and who keeps it running. Here is what each gives you and the signs it is time to move up a level.