Netlify vs Render
Kofi Agyem, Founder and CEO, CloudzyroPublished
Netlify and Render side by side on price, limits and how they charge, from each company's own pricing pages, with Cloudzyro as a third option.
| Feature | Netlify | Render | Cloudzyro |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free plan | 300 credits a month; every project paused when they run out | Free web services that spin down after 15 minutes | Launch: free, business use included, never sleeps |
| Paid plan | Pro: $20 a month for the team, 3,000 credits | Pro: $25 a month flat, plus each service's compute | Boost: $20 a month per site, compute included |
| Bandwidth | 20 credits per GB (about $0.13 at Pro pack prices) | 5 GB on Hobby, 25 GB on Pro, then $0.15 per GB | 100 GB on Launch, 1 TB per site on Boost, never charged |
| Best at | Static sites and frontends | Long-running services, workers and databases | Sites and web apps at a flat price per site |
Other companies' figures from Netlify pricing, Netlify: how credits work, Render: updated workspace plans, Render: free instances, checked October 31, 2026. Prices change, so check their pages before you decide.
The short answer
Netlify is built around static sites and frontends, and bills everything you use from a monthly pool of credits. Render runs long-lived services such as web servers, background workers and databases, with a flat workspace fee plus a price for each service. Choose Netlify for frontends, Render for backends. If you want one flat price per site with the compute and traffic included, Cloudzyro is a third option.
Free plans
Netlify's free plan has 300 credits a month as a hard limit. A production deploy costs 15 credits and each GB of bandwidth 20, and when the credits run out, every project on the account is paused until the next month.
Render's free web services spin down after 15 minutes without traffic and take about a minute to wake. Each workspace gets 750 free instance hours a month, and the free Hobby workspace includes 5 GB of bandwidth.
Cloudzyro's Launch plan is free with business use allowed and 100 GB of traffic a month, and sites never sleep.
Paid plans and what a small team pays
Netlify Pro is $20 a month for the whole team, with unlimited members and 3,000 credits. Render Pro is $25 a month flat, plus each service: a Starter web service is $7 a month, Standard $25.
For one always-on app and a small team: Netlify Pro is $20 plus any extra credits; Render is $25 plus at least $7 for the service, so $32 or more; Cloudzyro Boost is $20 a month with 2 CPUs, 2 GB of memory and 1 TB of traffic included.
Bandwidth and busy months
On Netlify, bandwidth spends 20 credits per GB, about $0.13 at the Pro credit pack price. On Render, the new plans include 5 GB (Hobby) or 25 GB (Pro) a month, then charge $0.15 per GB. On Cloudzyro, traffic is never charged: a site past its allowance is slowed for the rest of the month and stays online.
Which should you choose?
Choose Netlify if you're shipping static sites or frontends and like one plan for the team. Choose Render if you need servers, workers and databases running side by side. Choose Cloudzyro if you're putting websites and web apps online and want them always on, at a flat price per site, deployed from your AI tool, Git or a zip.