Render plans and prices
Render separates the workspace plan from the compute you run in it. The workspace fee is small. The instances are where the bill lives. These figures come from render.com/pricing.
| Workspace | Monthly price | Seats | Bandwidth included | Notable features |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hobby | 0 USD plus compute | 1 | 5 GB | Personal projects and prototypes |
| Pro | 25 USD plus compute | Unlimited | 25 GB | Preview environments, autoscaling, workspace audit logs |
| Scale | 499 USD plus compute | Unlimited | 1 TB | Multiple workspaces, extended metrics retention, governance and compliance features |
| Enterprise | Custom | Custom | Custom | Dedicated support and uptime SLA |
Past the included allowance, bandwidth costs 0.15 USD per GB on every plan. Custom domains are 0.25 USD each per month beyond the included ones (2 on Hobby, 15 on Pro, 25 on Scale).
Render web service prices per month
Every web service, private service, background worker and cron job runs on its own instance. A typical production web service uses one of these.
| Instance | Monthly price | RAM | CPU |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | 0 USD | 512 MB | Shared, spins down when idle |
| Starter | 7 USD | 512 MB | 0.5 |
| Standard | 25 USD | 2 GB | 1 |
| Pro | 85 USD | 4 GB | 2 |
| Pro Plus | 175 USD | 8 GB | 4 |
Starter is where most teams begin and where many outgrow it: 512 MB is thin for a Node.js, Rails or Python app with a build step and a few workers. Standard at 25 USD is the realistic production floor for a busy app, and each worker or scheduled job on its own instance adds the same again.
Database, disks and other line items
Render Postgres is priced per instance with its own ladder, separate from the workspace fee.
- Postgres. A free tier with limits, then 6 USD (256 MB), 19 USD (1 GB), 40 USD (2 GB), 55 USD (4 GB) and 75 USD (4 GB, 2 CPU) a month. Storage beyond the included 1 GB is 0.30 USD per GB.
- Bandwidth. 0.15 USD per GB over the included amount.
- Persistent disks. Billed per GB each month on top of the service instance.
- Preview environments. Each preview spins up its own instances, so they bill like any other service while they run.
Plan the database separately. A production app with a 2 GB Postgres adds 40 USD before it has served a single request. Tracking where those line items land across providers is easier when you can see cloud and SaaS spend in one read-only view.
What a real stack costs on Render
Take a startup with an API, a queue worker, a Next.js frontend, a staging copy of the API and a 2 GB Postgres. Prices in USD per month.
| Item | Plan | Monthly cost |
|---|---|---|
| Workspace | Pro | 25 |
| API | Pro instance, 4 GB | 85 |
| Worker | Standard, 2 GB | 25 |
| Next.js frontend | Starter, 512 MB | 7 |
| Staging API | Standard, 2 GB | 25 |
| Postgres | 2 GB | 40 |
| Total | 207 |
That is 207 USD before bandwidth overage, extra storage or domains. Each added service moves the total by its instance price, and the total grows in steps tied to RAM rather than to what the machine actually does.
Render vs your own servers
The same five workloads fit on one 8 GB, 4 vCPU cloud server, with Postgres on the same machine or on a second small one. Cloud servers of that size typically cost around 25 to 50 USD a month depending on the provider, so two servers (app and database, or production and staging) land around 50 to 100 USD.
| Setup | Panel or workspace | Compute | Monthly total |
|---|---|---|---|
| Render Pro | 25 | 182 | 207 |
| Two own servers with Deployment Starter | 49 | 50 to 100 | 99 to 149 |
| Same, Starter billed yearly | 24 | 50 to 100 | 74 to 124 |
The saving is real, around 60 to 130 USD a month here, and it widens as services multiply because extra processes share the server. What you take on in exchange is capacity planning, database backups and OS patching. Deployment handles the deploy side, health checked zero downtime releases, rollbacks and database backups to your own S3-compatible storage, but one server is not high availability. For a wider cost model see the PaaS versus own server cost breakdown and the Railway alternative comparison for usage-billed pricing.
When Render is the right buy
Render wins for a small team with one to three services that does not want to touch a server. There is nothing to size, managed Postgres is a click, previews work out of the box and the free tier carries a prototype. If your whole bill is under about 50 USD a month, the time you save is worth more than the difference.
It also fits teams that want zero infrastructure ownership by policy. If that is you, price the workspace and instances above against your own service list and stay put.
When Deployment fits the team
Move when the service count grows, when customers require workloads in your own cloud account, or when you need roles and an audit log without a 499 USD workspace. Deployment manages servers on AWS, DigitalOcean, Hetzner, Linode and Vultr, or bare metal over SSH, for PHP, Node.js, Next.js, Python, Rails, Go, Java, .NET, static sites and Docker.
| Deployment plan | Monthly price | Servers | Sites | Members or enterprise features |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Starter | 49 USD | 3 | 15 | 1 member |
| Team | 199 USD | 15 | 100 | 10 members, roles and audit log |
| Agency | 499 USD | 60 | Unlimited | 30 members |
| Enterprise | 1 499 USD | 250 | See plan details | SSO and SLA |
Yearly billing is half price. Review the Deployment prices and plan limits, read the full Render alternative comparison, then test one of your repositories in the deploy demo.