Free website hosting with a custom domain in 2026: what you actually get

Can a free plan host a real website?

Free hosting sounds simple until you try to put a real website on it. Then the fine print shows up: the free plan does not include a custom domain, or it bans business use, or the site pauses when the monthly credits run out.

I compared six places to host a static website for free in 2026: Cloudflare Pages, GitHub Pages, Netlify, Vercel, Tiiny.host, and Novence. The practical question is whether a normal website can live on your own domain for $0, and what the catch is.

This is for regular websites: a small business homepage, a portfolio, a landing page, or a site built with Claude, ChatGPT, or Cursor. It is not about full-stack apps with databases and logins.

Disclosure: I work on Novence, one of the hosts compared here. Other hosts beat it on some limits, and those cases are called out below. Limits were checked against each provider's docs and pricing pages in October 2026. Free tiers change, so check again before you commit.

What did I compare?

For a regular website, a few things decide whether a free plan is actually usable.

• ·A custom domain on the free plan: can you use yourbusiness.com, with HTTPS, without paying the host?
• ·Commercial use: is a business site allowed, or is the free plan for personal projects only?
• ·Bandwidth, and what happens at the limit: the site pauses, gets throttled, or starts costing money.
• ·Deploys: how many updates you can push each month.
• ·How you deploy: git and a GitHub account, or an uploaded folder.
• ·A contact form: can visitors send a message without a third-party service?
• ·Branding: does the host put its own banner on your site?

How do the six free plans compare?

Cloudflare Pages is the most generous on raw limits. GitHub Pages and Vercel Hobby rule out business sites, which catches a lot of people. Tiiny.host, like many drag-and-drop hosts, charges for a custom domain. Novence sits in the middle: smaller limits than Cloudflare, and a shorter path from an AI-built folder to a live site with a working form.

Cloudflare Pages

Cloudflare Pages has the strongest free tier in this list. Bandwidth and static requests are not capped, you get 500 builds a month and up to 100 custom domains per project, and HTTPS is automatic. Those 500 builds are shared across the whole account, not per site.

The catch: it is a developer platform. You work in the Cloudflare dashboard, usually by connecting a git repository, and there is no built-in contact form. You add Cloudflare Workers or a third-party form service. If you are comfortable with that, it is hard to beat on price.

GitHub Pages

GitHub Pages is free, reliable, and includes custom domains with HTTPS. A site can be up to 1 GB, with a soft bandwidth limit of 100 GB a month.

The catch: GitHub's usage terms say Pages is not meant to run an online business or e-commerce site. On a free GitHub account the repository also has to be public. It fits portfolios, docs, and project pages, and it is a poor fit for a client's business site. You also need to be comfortable with git.

Netlify

Netlify includes git deploys, drag-and-drop uploads, deploy previews, and built-in forms. The free plan runs on 300 credits a month. Bandwidth costs 20 credits per GB and each production deploy costs 15 credits, so the effective bandwidth is about 15 GB a month at most, and less once you have deployed a few times.

The catch: the 300 credits are a hard cap. When they run out, the site is paused until the next month unless you upgrade. Accounts created before September 2025 may still be on the older, more generous free plan.

Vercel Hobby

Vercel's Hobby plan includes 100 GB of bandwidth, automatic HTTPS, and custom domains.

The catch: Hobby is for personal, non-commercial use only. A business or client site needs the paid Pro plan. Vercel is also built around frameworks such as Next.js and git workflows, which is more than most simple sites need.

Tiiny.host

Tiiny.host is the simplest option here: upload an HTML file or ZIP and get a link in seconds, with no sign-up.

The catch: the free plan is closer to a trial than a home for a real site. It allows one small project (a 3 MB upload), shows a Tiiny.host banner, limits visits, and does not include a custom domain. Custom domains start on the paid plans.

Novence

Novence is a static host for sites built with AI tools. You deploy with npx novence deploy ./dist, or you ask Claude, Cursor, or another assistant to deploy for you. Git is optional, and there is no hosted dashboard to click through. After you verify your email, Free includes 1 live site, 1 GB of storage, 10 GB of bandwidth, 20 deploys a month, 1 custom domain, and 50 form submissions a month. Deploys on a verified account run Lighthouse, accessibility, and broken-link checks.

The catch: the limits are smaller than Cloudflare's. 10 GB of bandwidth is enough for a typical small business site, and a site with heavy images or video will outgrow it. It is static-only, so there are no server functions or databases. Like Netlify, the free plan uses hard caps: you are never charged for going over, and you do hit a wall at the limit.

Which host should you pick?

For a small business site, rule out GitHub Pages and Vercel Hobby first, because their terms do not allow it. That leaves Cloudflare Pages if you are comfortable in a developer dashboard, and Netlify or Novence if you want forms built in and a simpler setup.

• ·You want the biggest free limits and do not mind a developer dashboard: Cloudflare Pages.
• ·You have a personal portfolio or open-source project page and already use git: GitHub Pages.
• ·You want previews and forms, and traffic is modest: Netlify.
• ·You are building a personal Next.js project: Vercel Hobby.
• ·You need to share a quick demo link for a day or two: Tiiny.host.
• ·You built a site with Claude, ChatGPT, or Cursor and want it on your domain with a working form, without learning git: Novence.

How do you publish a site built with Claude or ChatGPT?

Any of these hosts work if the output is static HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. The Claude and ChatGPT guides walk through a folder to a live URL when you do not want to set up git or a dashboard.

What catches people on every free plan?

You still pay for the domain. Free custom domain means you can connect a domain you already own. You still buy the name from a registrar, typically $10-20 a year for a .com.

Read the terms, not only the pricing page. Business-use restrictions on GitHub Pages and Vercel Hobby live in the terms or docs, not the headline price. If the site sells anything or represents a business, check this first.

Know what happens at the limit. Hard caps, on Netlify and Novence, mean no surprise bill, and the site can pause or stop updating. Soft limits, on GitHub Pages, mean you may get an email asking you to reduce usage. Pick the failure mode you would rather have.

Images are usually what uses the bandwidth. One uncompressed hero photo can be several megabytes. WebP or AVIF, at the size the page actually displays, can cut that by most of the file, which stretches any free tier.

Free tiers change. Netlify moved to credits, and other hosts have tightened limits over the years. Keep the site as plain static files so you can move hosts in an afternoon if the terms change. A WordPress site does not run on these hosts as-is. Moving from WordPress means a static rebuild.

What is left to decide?

You can host a normal website on your own domain for $0 in 2026. The differences are in the fine print: business-use rules, what happens at the limit, and how much setup you will do. Pick the host whose trade-offs you can live with, and keep the site as plain static files so you are not locked in.

The same checks apply to any host not in this list: your own domain, whether business use is allowed, what happens at the limit, and how you deploy.

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