February 1, 2026 (2mo ago)
Written by Temps Team
Last updated March 31, 2026 (1w ago)
Netlify's free tier in 2026 includes 100GB bandwidth, 300 build minutes, and 125,000 serverless function invocations per month according to Netlify's pricing page. Those limits haven't changed since 2023, but the average web page now weighs 2.5MB — meaning your free allocation supports roughly 40,000 page views before overages hit. Coolify is free to self-host but has no built-in analytics or monitoring. Meanwhile, the self-hosted deployment market is projected to grow from $15.6B to $85.2B by 2034 — developers are increasingly choosing ownership over convenience-at-a-cost.
This guide breaks down Netlify's free tier limits, Coolify's current pricing and features, and how self-hosted PaaS platforms compare on cost and observability. Updated for March 2026.
TL;DR: Coolify v4 is free to self-host but has no built-in analytics, error tracking, or session replay — adding those costs $50-170/mo extra. Netlify's free tier gives you 100GB bandwidth and 300 build minutes but charges $19/seat on Pro. A self-hosted PaaS with bundled observability costs ~$25/mo total for a 5-person team.
| Feature | Netlify | Coolify | Temps |
|---|---|---|---|
| Type | Managed Cloud | Self-Hosted OSS | Self-Hosted Platform |
| Setup Time | 2 minutes | 30-60 minutes | 5 minutes |
| Pricing | Per-site + bandwidth | Free (infra only) | Free (infra only) |
| Team Seats | $19/user | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Learning Curve | Low | Moderate | Low |
| Analytics | $9/mo add-on | None | Built-in |
| Error Tracking | Extra cost | None | Built-in |
| Session Replay | No | No | Built-in |
| Best For | Managed simplicity & CDN | Docker-native flexibility | Bundled observability |
[IMAGE: Side-by-side comparison of Netlify, Coolify, and Temps dashboards — deployment platform dashboard comparison 2026]
Netlify's free tier includes 100GB bandwidth, 300 build minutes, and 125,000 serverless function invocations per month according to Netlify's pricing page. These limits haven't changed since 2023. However, the average web page size has grown 15% year-over-year per HTTP Archive's page weight report, which means your free allocation buys less than it used to.
Here's the full breakdown:
| Resource | Free Tier Limit | What It Means in Practice |
|---|---|---|
| Bandwidth | 100GB/month | ~40,000 page views for a 2.5MB Next.js site |
| Build minutes | 300/month | ~60 deploys for a typical project (5 min/build) |
| Serverless functions | 125K invocations/month | Each API route call or SSR page counts |
| Function runtime | 10 seconds max | Long-running operations will timeout |
| Team members | 1 | Solo developer only — no collaborators |
| Form submissions | 100/month | Contact forms fill up fast |
| Large media storage | Not included | Requires paid plan |
| Analytics | Not included | $9/mo add-on |
| Password protection | Not included | Pro+ only |
In our testing, a Next.js marketing site with images averaged 2.5MB per page load — meaning Netlify's 100GB free bandwidth supports roughly 40,000 page views per month. That sounds like a lot until a single blog post hits Hacker News.
A moderately successful product launch can generate 10,000-20,000 visitors in a day. At 2.5MB per page view, that's 25-50GB burned in 24 hours. You'd exhaust your entire monthly bandwidth allowance in two to four days of sustained traffic.
We've seen Next.js apps with image-heavy landing pages hit 4-5MB per page load. At that size, 100GB lasts about 20,000 page views — roughly two weeks of modest traffic for a small SaaS.
Each git push triggers a build. A typical Next.js site takes 3-5 minutes to build. That gives you 60-100 deploys per month, or about 2-3 per day. Active development teams pushing multiple times daily hit this limit within two weeks. What happens then? You either wait for the next billing cycle or upgrade to Pro.
Every API route call, SSR page render, and form submission counts toward your invocation limit. A SaaS dashboard with 5 API calls per page view and 10,000 monthly visitors uses 50,000 invocations — 40% of the free tier without even trying. Add authentication checks, webhook handlers, and background tasks, and you're over the limit by mid-month.
Netlify's Pro tier starts at $19 per team member per month — and that's before bandwidth overages, which run $55 per 100GB. For teams larger than two developers, per-seat pricing compounds quickly.
| Tier | Monthly Cost | Bandwidth | Build Minutes | Functions |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | 100GB | 300 min | 125K invocations |
| Pro | $19/user | 1TB | 25K min | Included |
| Business | $99/user | Unlimited | 25K min | Included |
| Enterprise | Custom | Custom | Custom | Custom |
Say your startup has 5 developers and 200K monthly visitors:
Scale that to 15 developers and you're looking at $450+/month before overages. Is it worth it? For teams that truly want zero infrastructure management, maybe. But plenty of alternatives deliver the same developer experience for a fraction of the cost.
[CHART: Bar chart — Monthly cost comparison by team size (1, 5, 15, 50 devs) across Netlify, Coolify, and Temps — source: platform pricing pages 2026]
Coolify is an open-source, self-hosted platform for deploying applications via Docker — currently running on over 52,890 public instances. It's free to self-host and offers a managed cloud option starting at $5/month. For a deeper side-by-side breakdown, see our full Temps vs Coolify comparison.
As of March 2026, Coolify is on version 4.x — a stable, actively maintained release that supports Docker, Docker Compose, and Dockerfile-based deployments. The much-anticipated v5 rewrite shows 0% milestone completion on GitHub with no announced release date. This matters because v5 promises significant architectural changes, and adopting Coolify now means potentially migrating again when v5 eventually ships.
We tracked Coolify's GitHub milestone page weekly from January through March 2026. The v5 milestone remained at 0% throughout, with no issues assigned to it and no public timeline from the maintainers. Coolify v4 continues receiving bug fixes and minor features, but major new capabilities are blocked on the v5 rewrite.
Here's what Coolify v4 currently offers:
| Feature | Coolify v4 Status |
|---|---|
| Git push deployments | Yes |
| Docker Compose support | Yes |
| Managed PostgreSQL | Yes |
| Managed MySQL | Yes |
| Managed Redis | Yes |
| Managed MongoDB | Yes |
| Custom domains + SSL | Yes |
| Multi-server support | Yes |
| Preview deployments | Manual setup required |
| Built-in analytics | No |
| Error tracking | No |
| Session replay | No |
| Uptime monitoring | No |
| Status pages | No |
| Log aggregation | Basic (Docker logs) |
| Team management | Yes |
| S3-compatible storage | No |
| Transactional email | No |
Coolify excels at deployment and database management. Where it falls short is observability — there's no built-in way to track errors, monitor uptime, analyze traffic, or replay user sessions. You'll need to set up and maintain separate tools for each of those.
Coolify offers both self-hosted (free) and cloud-managed options:
| Plan | Monthly Cost | Included |
|---|---|---|
| Self-hosted | $0 (+ VPS cost) | Full platform, you manage everything |
| Cloud Basic | $5/mo | 2 servers |
| Cloud Pro | $27/mo | 10 servers |
| Cloud Ultimate | $47/mo | 25 servers |
| Cloud Enterprise | Custom | Unlimited |
The cloud pricing covers Coolify's management layer — you still pay separately for your VPS infrastructure. So the real cost of "Coolify Cloud" for a team is:
| Setup | Monthly Cost |
|---|---|
| Self-hosted + Hetzner 4GB | ~$4-7/mo (just VPS) |
| Cloud Basic + Hetzner 4GB | ~$9-12/mo |
| Cloud Pro + Hetzner 8GB | ~$34/mo |
| + Analytics (Plausible) | +$9/mo |
| + Error tracking (Sentry) | +$26/mo |
| + Session replay | +$99/mo (LogRocket) or DIY |
| Total with observability | $40-170/mo |
This is where the "free" label gets complicated. Coolify is free software, but production apps need monitoring:
| What You Need | Coolify Approach | Additional Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Web analytics | Self-host Plausible/Umami | $0 (self-host) or $9-19/mo |
| Error tracking | Self-host Sentry or pay for cloud | $0 (heavy self-host) or $26-89/mo |
| Session replay | Highlight.io shut down Feb 2026; no good free option | $99+/mo (LogRocket) |
| Uptime monitoring | UptimeRobot, Better Uptime | $0-50/mo |
| Status pages | Cachet, Instatus | $0-29/mo |
| Log aggregation | Loki + Grafana (manual setup) | $0 (significant setup time) |
A realistic Coolify production stack with observability runs $40-170/month when you add the tools most teams actually need. Compare that to a self-hosted PaaS that bundles all of it at the infrastructure-only price.
Don't forget the hidden cost: DevOps time. In our experience, teams without dedicated infrastructure engineers spend 5-10 hours per month on maintenance, updates, and troubleshooting. That's real money even if the software is free.
Self-hosted platforms like Temps aim to combine Netlify's developer experience with Coolify's cost structure — deploying with git push and getting preview environments while running on your own infrastructure. The self-hosted software market's 18.5% CAGR growth suggests this approach is resonating with developers.
Most managed platforms charge separately for observability tools. On a self-hosted PaaS, these come bundled:
With Highlight.io's shutdown in February 2026, the open-source session replay space has shrunk considerably. Self-hosted platforms that bundle replay into the deployment tool fill a gap that now has fewer standalone alternatives.
| Item | Monthly Cost |
|---|---|
| Platform fee | $0 |
| VPS (production-ready) | $20-40 |
| Team seats | $0 (unlimited) |
| Analytics | $0 (included) |
| Error tracking | $0 (included) |
| Session replay | $0 (included) |
| Total | $20-40 |
Across deployment experience, built-in tooling, and team collaboration, these three platforms diverge sharply. Netlify excels at managed simplicity while Coolify and Temps prioritize cost control.
| Capability | Netlify | Coolify | Temps |
|---|---|---|---|
| Git push deploys | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Preview environments | Yes | Manual | Yes |
| Automatic HTTPS | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Custom domains | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Deploy previews | Yes | No | Yes |
| Rollbacks | Yes | Manual | Yes |
| Feature | Netlify | Coolify | Temps |
|---|---|---|---|
| Analytics | $9/mo add-on | No | Included |
| Error tracking | No | No | Included |
| Session replay | No | No | Included |
| Uptime monitoring | No | No | Included |
| Log aggregation | Limited | Manual | Included |
| Feature | Netlify | Coolify | Temps |
|---|---|---|---|
| Team members | $19/seat | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Role-based access | Pro+ | Yes | Yes |
| Audit logs | Business+ | Manual | Yes |
| SSO/SAML | Enterprise | No | Planned |
| Feature | Netlify | Coolify | Temps |
|---|---|---|---|
| Data location | Netlify's choice | You choose | You choose |
| Compliance | SOC2, GDPR | Your responsibility | Your infrastructure |
| Scaling | Automatic | Manual | Automatic |
| Database hosting | No | Yes | Yes |
The cost gap between managed and self-hosted platforms widens dramatically with team size. A solo developer pays nothing on Netlify's free tier, but a 15-person team pays $450+/month before bandwidth overages.
| Platform | Monthly Cost |
|---|---|
| Netlify | $0 (free tier) |
| Coolify | $6 (cheap VPS) |
| Temps | $10 (basic server) |
Winner: Netlify. The free tier handles side projects perfectly. No reason to self-host for a personal blog or portfolio.
| Platform | Monthly Cost | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Netlify | $134 | 5 Pro seats + bandwidth |
| Coolify | $40 | VPS + your DevOps time |
| Temps | $25 | VPS + everything included |
Winner: Self-hosted. At 5 developers, Netlify's per-seat pricing starts to sting. The question is whether you want Coolify's flexibility or a more managed self-hosted experience.
| Platform | Monthly Cost | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Netlify | $450+ | 15 seats + overages |
| Coolify | $80 | Larger VPS, significant ops |
| Temps | $50 | Larger VPS, all included |
Winner: Self-hosted. The math is overwhelming at this scale. Even factoring in DevOps time, self-hosting saves thousands annually.
| Platform | Monthly Cost | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Netlify | $4,950+ | Business tier required |
| Coolify | $200 | Major DevOps investment |
| Temps | $100 | Enterprise features included |
Winner: It depends. Netlify Business makes sense if your company genuinely needs zero infrastructure management and has the budget. Self-hosting wins on cost. Coolify wins on maximum control.
Heroku's shift to a sustaining-only model in early 2026 has pushed another wave of developers toward self-hosted alternatives. If you're among them, the cost comparisons above should help frame your decision.
The right platform depends on three factors: your team's DevOps skills, your monthly budget, and how much observability tooling you need bundled in. According to the 2025 Stack Overflow Developer Survey, 62% of professional developers now prefer platforms with integrated monitoring.
Netlify's free tier includes 100GB bandwidth, 300 build minutes, 125,000 serverless function invocations, and 100 form submissions per month. You're limited to 1 team member, and analytics costs $9/month extra. These limits haven't changed since 2023.
It depends on your skill set. Coolify costs less (free software + $20-40/mo VPS) but requires Docker and Linux expertise. Netlify costs more but handles all infrastructure for you. Coolify has 52,890+ public instances and strong community support, but no built-in analytics or error tracking.
For solo developers, Netlify's free tier is unbeatable at $0/month. For teams of 3+, self-hosted platforms win on cost — typically $20-40/month for a VPS versus $57-134+/month on Netlify Pro. The cheapest option also depends on whether you factor in DevOps time as a cost.
Coolify is on version 4.x as of March 2026. The v5 rewrite shows 0% milestone completion on GitHub with no announced release date. Coolify v4 is stable and actively maintained with bug fixes, but major new features are waiting on the v5 rewrite.
Coolify v4 supports git push deployments, Docker Compose, managed databases (PostgreSQL, MySQL, Redis, MongoDB), custom domains with SSL, and multi-server deployments. It does not include built-in analytics, error tracking, session replay, uptime monitoring, or status pages — you need separate tools for all of those.
Coolify Cloud starts at $5/mo (2 servers), $27/mo (10 servers), or $47/mo (25 servers). This covers the management layer only — you still pay for VPS infrastructure separately. With observability tools added (analytics, error tracking, session replay), the total cost for a production setup is typically $40-170/mo.
No. Coolify doesn't include analytics, error tracking, or session replay. You'd need to self-host Plausible or Umami for analytics, set up Sentry for error tracking, and find a session replay tool — though options are shrinking after Highlight.io shut down in February 2026.
Yes. Netlify's free tier allows commercial use with no restrictions on the type of site. However, the 100GB bandwidth limit and single team member constraint make it impractical for most production commercial applications. You'll likely need to upgrade to Pro at $19/user/month once you have real traffic or collaborators.
Netlify remains the easiest way to deploy a static site. Its free tier is genuinely useful for solo developers and prototypes. But per-seat pricing and bandwidth overages make it expensive as teams grow.
Coolify gives you maximum control at minimal cost — if you have the DevOps skills to match. With v5 at 0% milestone completion, the current version is what you're committing to for the foreseeable future.
Self-hosted PaaS platforms occupy the middle ground: Netlify's push-to-deploy workflow with infrastructure costs closer to Coolify's. For production applications where you need analytics, error tracking, and session replay without bolting on five separate SaaS subscriptions, they're worth evaluating.
The self-hosted market's 18.5% annual growth rate suggests the industry is moving in this direction. Whichever platform you choose, run the numbers for your specific team size and traffic before committing.
Last updated March 23, 2026. Coolify version and pricing verified against GitHub and coolify.io.
Related guides:
