Render pricing explained: workspace plans, instances and bandwidth
Kofi Agyem, Founder and CEO, CloudzyroPublished
How Render's pricing works: the Hobby, Pro and Scale workspace plans, what each service instance costs, bandwidth and build charges, with worked examples.
1. Render's pricing at a glance
Render charges in two layers: a workspace plan for your team, and a price for each service you run, based on its size. Figures from Render's pricing page and docs, checked on November 1, 2026.
- Hobby workspace: free, 5 GB of bandwidth a month
- Pro workspace: $25 a month flat, 25 GB of bandwidth a month
- Scale workspace: $499 a month flat, 1 TB of bandwidth a month
- Enterprise: custom
- Extra bandwidth on every plan: $0.15 per GB
Since April 2026 the workspace plans are a flat fee, not a price per member, but they include less bandwidth than Render's older plans.
2. What each service instance costs
Web services, private services and background workers are priced by instance size, per instance, each month:
- Free: $0, 512 MB and 0.1 CPU (web services only; spins down when quiet)
- Starter: $7, 512 MB and 0.5 CPU
- Standard: $25, 2 GB and 1 CPU
- Pro: $85, 4 GB and 2 CPUs
- Pro Plus: $175, 8 GB and 4 CPUs
- Pro Max: $225, 16 GB and 4 CPUs
- Pro Ultra: $450, 32 GB and 8 CPUs
Running more than one instance of a service multiplies its price. Databases are separate: Render lists a free Postgres database and paid ones from $6 a month for 256 MB of memory.
3. The free tier: what to expect
Free web services spin down after 15 minutes without traffic, and the next visitor waits about a minute while they start again. Each workspace gets 750 free instance hours a month; if they run out, free services are suspended until the next month. Going over free bandwidth without a payment method also suspends them.
4. Worked examples
- A side project that must stay awake: a Starter web service on the free Hobby workspace is $7 a month, with 5 GB of bandwidth.
- A small team's app: the Pro workspace ($25) plus a Standard web service ($25) is $50 a month, plus a database from $6.
- A busy month: 125 GB of bandwidth on Pro is 100 GB over the included 25 GB, which adds $15.
5. How to keep your Render bill down
- Pick the smallest instance your app runs well on, and check its memory use before moving up.
- Watch bandwidth: the new plans include far less than before, and each extra GB is $0.15.
- Use one instance unless you need more; each extra instance costs the full instance price.
6. When a flat price fits better
If you're putting a website or web app online and want one predictable price, Cloudzyro includes the compute and traffic in a flat price per site. Sites never sleep, even on the free Launch plan, which allows business use and includes 100 GB of traffic. Boost is $20 a month per site with 2 CPUs, 2 GB of memory and 1 TB of traffic, and a busy site is slowed past its allowance, never charged extra.
See Cloudzyro vs Render, Render vs Vercel and Render alternatives for side-by-side tables.