Fly.io Free Tier 2026: What Can You Actually Host for Free?

Prices verified: March 25, 2026 | Source: fly.io/docs/about/pricing | Data: Our daily Fly.io monitoring

Fly.io used to offer one of the most generous free tiers for developers: 3 always-on VMs with 256MB RAM each, 3GB storage, and up to 160GB bandwidth. That ended in 2024 when Fly.io deprecated its Hobby, Launch, and Scale plans. Now, new users get a free trial that lasts 2 VM hours or 7 days — whichever ends first. After the trial, you pay for every resource your app uses.

I track Fly.io's pricing daily as part of monitoring 260+ SaaS tools. The most common question I see in developer forums is whether Fly.io still offers free hosting. The short answer: no. The long answer involves understanding exactly what the trial gives you, what everything costs after, and whether Railway or Render might be a better fit.

What Does the Fly.io Free Trial Actually Include?

When you sign up for Fly.io in 2026, you get a free trial. Not a free tier. The distinction matters because this trial has hard limits that will stop your apps dead.

Two VM hours sounds like enough to test an app. It is not. Here is how fast those hours burn: if you deploy one machine and leave it running, your trial ends in 2 hours. If you deploy two machines, it ends in 1 hour. Fly.io auto-stops machines after 5 minutes of inactivity to stretch the trial, but any active request restarts the clock.

When your trial expires, apps stop. You cannot deploy, launch new machines, or attach volumes until you add a credit card. There is no grace period.

What Did Fly.io's Free Tier Used to Include?

Before October 2024, Fly.io's Hobby, Launch, and Scale plans included permanent free allowances. Based on our pricing history tracking and Archive.org snapshots, the old free tier was genuinely useful:

The old free allowances let developers run small side projects indefinitely. The new trial barely gives you enough time to deploy and test. If you are on a legacy Hobby, Launch, or Scale plan, you still get the old free resources. But new organizations created after October 7, 2024 are on pay-as-you-go only.

How Much Does Fly.io Cost After the Trial?

Fly.io uses usage-based pricing. There are no fixed monthly plans. You pay for the resources your machines consume, tracked per second. Here is what a minimal setup costs:

That is a bare-bones single-region app. Once you add a database, more RAM, or a second region, costs climb fast:

• Small app + Postgres: $8-12/month (shared CPU + 1GB volume for DB)
• Two regions (US + EU): $8-10/month (double the compute)
• Performance CPU (2x, 4GB): $64/month per machine

Cost-saving tip: Machine reservations save 40% if you commit annually. A shared-cpu-1x reservation costs $36/year instead of ~$24/year at on-demand rates. But you need to know your usage patterns first.

What Can You Realistically Host on the Free Trial?

With 2 VM hours and machines that auto-stop after 5 minutes of idle time, the free trial is designed for evaluation rather than hosting. Here is a realistic breakdown of what you can and cannot accomplish before the trial expires:

The free trial is an evaluation tool, not a hosting solution. Fly.io designed it to let you confirm the platform works for your stack before you start paying. The 5-minute auto-stop is especially limiting: if a client visits your demo app after it has been idle, the machine must cold-start before responding. For any use case beyond a quick personal test, you either need to add a credit card or pick a different platform entirely.

How Does Fly.io Compare to Railway and Render for Free Hosting?

This is the comparison most developers actually need. I track all three platforms daily and here is where each stands in March 2026:

When Each Platform Wins

Choose Render if: You want free hosting that actually stays running. Render's free Hobby plan gives you web services with 512MB RAM at $0/month. There are cold starts (apps sleep after inactivity and take a few seconds to wake), but the app stays deployed indefinitely. No credit card required. This is the closest thing to "free hosting" that exists in 2026.

Choose Railway if: You need databases alongside your app and are willing to pay $5/month after the trial. Railway's developer experience is the best of the three: connect GitHub, push code, get a URL in seconds. The 30-day trial with $5 credits is enough to build and test a full-stack app before deciding.

Choose Fly.io if: You specifically need multi-region or edge deployment. This is the only scenario where Fly.io beats both Railway and Render. If your users are spread across continents and latency matters, Fly.io's ability to deploy replicas in 30+ regions is unmatched. But you will pay for it from day one.

For a deeper breakdown, see our Railway vs Fly.io vs Render comparison.

Can You Still Get Fly.io Free Allowances?

Only if you are on a legacy plan. Organizations created before Fly.io deprecated its Hobby, Launch, and Scale plans still receive free allowances:

• 3 shared-cpu-1x VMs with 256MB RAM each
• 3GB persistent volume storage
• 100GB outbound data (North America and Europe)
• 30GB outbound data (Asia Pacific, Oceania, South America, Africa, India)

There is no way for new users to access these allowances. Fly.io has not announced any plans to reintroduce a free tier. The deprecation followed a broader industry trend — Heroku removed its free tier in November 2022, and Railway followed in August 2023. Free compute attracts abuse (crypto miners, spam bots), and the cost of policing it outweighs the growth benefit.

If you have a legacy account, do not switch to pay-as-you-go unless you understand what you are giving up. Once you leave a deprecated plan, there is no going back to the old free allowances.

What About Free Alternatives for Specific Use Cases?

If your goal is free hosting rather than specifically Fly.io, the best option depends on what you are building. Static sites have the most generous free tiers. Backend APIs and databases are harder to host for free, but not impossible. Here is a breakdown by use case:

The pattern is clear: multi-region is not free anywhere. If you need edge deployment, budget at least $5-10/month. For everything else, there are genuinely free options that can run a small project indefinitely. The trade-off is usually cold starts (apps sleep when idle) or limited resources, but for side projects and MVPs, that is perfectly acceptable.

Our Data: How We Track These Prices

This article is based on daily pricing monitoring across all three platforms. We have tracked Fly.io, Railway, and Render through multiple pricing changes since 2017. All pricing data was verified against official documentation: Fly.io pricing docs, Railway pricing, and Render pricing.

• Fly.io: 22 snapshots across 9 years (2017-2026), including the free tier removal in 2024
• Railway: Tracked through the free tier removal in August 2023 and credit model introduction
• Render: Tracked through the transition from generous free tier to current Hobby plan structure

If any of these platforms change their free tier or pricing, we will detect it automatically and update this page. For the full timeline of how Fly.io evolved from a CDN at $0.0035 per request to today's VM-based billing, see our complete Fly.io pricing history covering 9 years of changes.