Render Pricing 2026: Free Tier Sleep, Plans, Compute
Render bills a workspace plan (Hobby $0, Pro $25/month, Scale $499/month) plus compute for every service, from $7/month for an always-on web service; free web services spin down after 15 minutes idle until moved to a paid instance.
Every Render bill has two parts: a workspace plan, which buys seats, bandwidth and platform features, and compute, which you pay per service on top. The figures below come from Render's pricing page and free-tier docs, checked as of October 2026. If you are deciding between Render and a self-hosted platform rather than budgeting for Render itself, the feature-by-feature comparison is on Temps vs Render.
TL;DR: Hobby is $0 + compute (1 seat, 25 services, 5 GB bandwidth). Pro is $25/month + compute (unlimited seats, 25 GB). Scale is $499/month + compute (multiple workspaces, SAML SSO, 1 TB). Web services cost $0 (Free, sleeps), then $7/month for 512 MB and $25/month for 2 GB. Postgres starts at $6/month. Upgrading the workspace plan does not stop a Free service from sleeping — moving the service to a paid instance does, on any plan.
What Are Render's Workspace Plans in 2026?
Render's four workspace plans all say "+ compute": the plan fee never includes the services you run.
| Plan | Price | Seats | Included bandwidth | What the plan adds |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hobby | $0/mo + compute | 1 | 5 GB, then $0.15/GB | Up to 25 services, single-service previews, custom domains, firewall and DDoS mitigation, database PITR (3 days) |
| Pro | $25/mo + compute | Unlimited | 25 GB, then $0.15/GB | Unlimited services, full-stack previews, horizontal autoscaling, isolated environments, OIDC, AWS PrivateLink, workspace audit logs |
| Scale | $499/mo + compute | Unlimited | 1 TB, then $0.15/GB | Multiple workspaces, inbound IP rules, HIPAA-compliant workspaces (20% compute premium), SAML SSO and SCIM, advanced RBAC |
| Enterprise | Custom | Unlimited | Custom | Contractual uptime SLAs, technical account manager, support Slack channel, support response SLAs |
Other plan-level limits that show up on the bill: build pipeline minutes (500/month on Hobby, 1,000 on Pro, 5,000 on Scale, then $5 per 1,000), custom domains (2 on Hobby, 15 on Pro, 25 on Scale, then $0.25 per domain per month) and log retention (7, 14 and 30 days).
How Much Does Render Compute Cost?
Compute is priced per instance, per month, prorated by the second. These are the smaller sizes most teams start with:
| Service | Instance | Price |
|---|---|---|
| Web service, private service or background worker | Free (web services only) — 512 MB | $0/month |
| 0.5 CPU / 512 MB | $7/month | |
| 1 CPU / 2 GB | $25/month | |
| 2 CPU / 4 GB | $85/month | |
| 4 CPU / 8 GB | $175/month | |
| Postgres | Free — 256 MB, 1 GB storage, expires after 30 days | $0/month |
| 256 MB | $6/month | |
| 1 GB | $19/month | |
| 1 CPU / 2 GB | $40/month | |
| Key Value (Redis-compatible) | Free — 25 MB, no persistence | $0/month |
| 256 MB | $10/month | |
| 1 GB | $20/month | |
| Persistent disk | per GB | $0.25/GB-month |
| Postgres storage | per GB beyond the included 1 GB | $0.30/GB |
| Cron jobs | 0.5 CPU / 512 MB | $0.00016/minute |
| Static sites | — | Free |
Background workers have no free instance type; the cheapest is the same $7/month instance a web service uses.
Does Render's Free Tier Sleep, and What Stops It?
Free web services spin down after 15 minutes without inbound traffic and take about a minute to start again on the next request. Each workspace gets 750 free instance hours a month across its Free web services.
The fix is a paid instance, not a bigger plan. Render's docs say: "Upgrading your workspace plan does not remove limitations on Free instances." Moving one web service from Free to the $7/month instance keeps it running, and that works on the $0 Hobby plan. Paying $25/month for Pro while leaving the service on a Free instance changes nothing about the sleep.
The other free-tier limits:
- Free Postgres expires 30 days after creation, with a 14-day grace period to upgrade before Render deletes it. It is capped at 1 GB of storage, and a workspace can have one.
- Free Key Value (one per workspace) does not persist data to disk.
- Free services count toward the plan's included bandwidth and build minutes; once those run out, services are suspended or billed if a payment method is on file.
Is Render's Pro Plan Per Seat?
No. In April 2026 Render replaced its per-member plans with flat workspace fees: Pro ($25/month flat) replaced Professional ($19 per member per month), and Scale ($499/month flat) replaced Organization ($29 per member per month), per Render's changelog. Pro and Scale include unlimited seats. Hobby stays at one seat, so a team of two or more needs Pro.
What Does a Production App on Render Cost?
Three worked examples, using the list prices above (no bandwidth overage):
| Setup | Plan | Compute | Monthly total |
|---|---|---|---|
| Solo, always-on | Hobby $0 | Web $7 + Postgres 256 MB $6 | $13 |
| Small team | Pro $25 | Web 1 CPU / 2 GB $25 + Postgres 1 GB $19 + Key Value 256 MB $10 | $79 |
| Small team with a worker | Pro $25 | Web $25 + worker $7 + Postgres 1 GB $19 + Key Value $10 | $86 |
Render includes health checks, service metrics and logs, and Pro adds an OpenTelemetry metrics stream. It does not include error tracking, product analytics, session replay or external uptime checks, so most production teams add those separately. The common third-party set — Plausible Starter $9 + Sentry Team $26 + LogRocket from $176 — is $211/month, which would take the small-team example from $79 to about $290/month.
How Does Self-Hosting Compare on Cost?
The alternative to paying per instance is running the apps on a server you rent yourself. Temps is free to self-host (MIT / Apache 2.0) and bundles deployment with web analytics, error tracking, session replay and uptime monitoring, so the monthly cost is the server: a Hetzner CX23 (2 shared vCPU, 4 GB RAM) is €5.49/month excluding VAT (plus €0.50 for a primary IPv4), checked October 2026. You also take on what Render does for you: OS updates, backups to your own S3 target, and DDoS protection (put a CDN in front). Temps has no persistent volumes for app containers and no separate worker process type, so disk-backed services move to managed Postgres or S3, or to a Docker Compose project with named volumes.
The head-to-head on features, limits and migration effort is on Temps vs Render, and the step-by-step move is in the Render migration guide.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much does Render cost in 2026?
Render has four workspace plans — Hobby $0, Pro $25/month, Scale $499/month and Enterprise (custom) — and every plan adds compute for each service. Web services start at $7/month for 512 MB after the free instance, and Postgres starts at $6/month. A solo always-on app with a database is about $13/month; a small team on Pro with a 2 GB web service, Postgres and Key Value is about $79/month.
Does upgrading to Render Pro stop free services from sleeping?
No. Render's docs say upgrading the workspace plan does not remove the limits on Free instances. A Free web service keeps spinning down after 15 minutes idle until you move that service to a paid instance (from $7/month), which you can do on any plan, including Hobby.
Is Render's Pro plan per seat?
No. Since April 2026, Pro is $25/month flat per workspace with unlimited seats, plus compute. It replaced the per-member Professional plan ($19 per member). Scale ($499/month flat) replaced Organization ($29 per member).
How long does Render's free Postgres database last?
Free Render Postgres databases expire 30 days after creation. Render gives a 14-day grace period to upgrade to a paid instance (from $6/month) before deleting the database. Free Postgres is limited to 1 GB of storage and one database per workspace.
Does Render include error tracking or analytics?
No. Render provides health checks, service metrics and logs, but not error tracking, product analytics or session replay, on any plan. Teams usually add Sentry, an analytics tool and a session replay tool on top of their Render bill.
Is there a self-hosted version of Render?
No. Render is a managed service and every workload runs on Render's infrastructure. Self-hosted platforms such as Temps, Coolify and Dokploy give a similar git-push workflow on your own server; see Temps vs Render for how Temps compares.
Related guides:
- Temps vs Render — feature-by-feature comparison and migration notes
- Railway Pricing 2026 — Railway's plans and per-second usage rates
- Fly.io Pricing 2026 — Fly.io's pay-as-you-go Machines and Postgres pricing
- 9 Best Heroku Alternatives — Render alongside eight other platforms
- 8 Best Sentry Alternatives for Error Tracking — the error tracking Render doesn't include
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