Only Two Free Tiers Left: What Render and PythonAnywhere Still Give Away vs. a $5 Hetzner Box
Only Render and PythonAnywhere still offer free-forever compute in September 2026. A line-by-line comparison of what each survivor covers — including Render's 30-day database cliff — against a ~$5/month Hetzner CX22, and which side of the free-vs-owned line a side project should start on.
The Free Tier Is Dead in 2026 Except Render: What Zero-to-Free Now Costs a Side Project on Each PaaS
Heroku killed free in 2022, Fly.io and Railway followed — only Render still offers a free-forever tier. A platform-by-platform accounting of trial credits, minimum paid floors, sleep schedules, and 12-month totals for a typical side project, against the flat-rate Hetzner box that never sleeps.
A $10 Hetzner VPS Hosts a Dozen Small Projects Where Managed PaaS Costs $50-100: Auditing the Math
A $10 Hetzner VPS really can host a dozen small projects for about $11-14 a month against $50-104 managed — but the 5-10x gap assumes free ops time, single-box risk, and one machine forever. A receipt-by-receipt audit with breakeven math and the second-machine breakpoint.
Render's Flex Plan Bills Background Jobs by the Second: The New Math vs. a Flat Hetzner Box
Render's September 1 flex plan bills Workflows task runs for actual CPU and RAM by the second. Three workload mixes priced both ways show where metered billing beats a €5.49 Hetzner box — and where the flat box wins by 8x.
Vercel Hobby Is Free Until Your Side Project Earns a Dollar
Vercel's Hobby tier stays free only until your project earns its first dollar — then the non-commercial clause pushes you to $20/seat Pro. A worked first-revenue-year comparison against a flat Hetzner box, plus when staying is still the right call.
No Monthly Minimum: What Four Usage-Only PaaS Bills Cost at 10%, 50%, and 100% Utilization
Four platforms bill pure usage with no monthly minimum. Modeling Fly.io, Cloudflare Workers, Neon, and Northflank against the same workload shows usage billing wins below ~20% utilization — and a flat five-dollar Hetzner box wins above it.
Your PaaS Is Now an Install Flag: What One-Click Installers Assume About Where Self-Hosters Start
Contabo, hlab, and VPSBox now ship single-box PaaS panels as one-click installs — and every one of them optimizes the first deploy while skipping upgrades, backups, and the second machine.
1.5TB of RAM and 192 vCPUs for Under €600/Month: What a Hybrid Talos-on-Hetzner Build Validates About Splitting Control Planes From Workers
A third-party builder ran 1.5TB of RAM and 192 vCPUs on hybrid Talos-on-Hetzner iron for under €600/month. Here is what the numbers verify, what broke on the VM-to-bare-metal seam, and where the bare-metal-is-cheaper claim lands.
Netlify's Credit-Based Billing, One Year Later: What Metered Credits Actually Cost Teams
One year after Netlify replaced seat pricing with metered credits, we run the numbers: a worked before/after bill comparison, the spike-month volatility problem, and how flat-rate self-hosted hardware compares.