Sample data note
Free Static Hosting Limits Compared: Cloudflare Pages vs Netlify vs Vercel vs GitHub Pages
A side-by-side table of free static hosting quotas — bandwidth, builds, commercial use, ads, and custom domains — with the date each figure was checked.
On our capture date, Cloudflare Pages was the only widely used free tier with unmetered bandwidth and a written commercial-use allowance. Netlify Free allowed 100 GB of bandwidth and 300 build minutes per month, Vercel Hobby allowed roughly 100 GB but prohibited commercial use, and GitHub Pages allowed 1 GB of published site with 100 GB per month of soft bandwidth and was not intended for e-commerce.
- Cloudflare Pages free tier: unmetered bandwidth and requests, 500 builds per month, 20,000 files per site, 25 MiB per file (checked 2026-10-25).
- Netlify Free: 100 GB bandwidth per month, 300 build minutes per month, 125,000 serverless function invocations (checked 2026-10-25).
- Vercel Hobby: about 100 GB bandwidth per month, commercial use prohibited by the plan terms (checked 2026-10-25).
- GitHub Pages: 1 GB published site size, 100 GB per month soft bandwidth, 10 builds per hour, not intended for commercial e-commerce (checked 2026-10-25).
- Only Cloudflare Pages among these four states a commercial-use allowance that does not depend on a paid plan (checked 2026-10-25).
4 primary sources · If this is out of date, tell us and we will re-measure.
On this page
Why this table exists
Hosting quota pages are long, undated, and written for lawyers. The question people actually ask is narrower: can I put ads on it, and will it fall over at 50,000 page views? This page answers only that, and prints the date each figure was confirmed so you can tell whether it still holds.
The comparison
| Host | Bandwidth | Builds | Commercial use | Custom domain | Notable cap |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cloudflare Pages | Unmetered | 500 / month | Allowed | Yes, free | 20,000 files, 25 MiB per file |
| Netlify Free | 100 GB / month | 300 minutes / month | Allowed | Yes, free | 125k function invocations |
| Vercel Hobby | ~100 GB / month | Included | Prohibited on Hobby | Yes, free | Fair-use enforcement |
| GitHub Pages | 100 GB / month soft | 10 builds / hour | Not intended for e-commerce | Yes, free | 1 GB published site |
Verified 2026-10-25 against each vendor's own limits page. See Sources.
What actually breaks first
Bandwidth is almost never the binding constraint for a text site. A 60 KB HTML page with a 20 KB stylesheet serves 12,000 page views per GB, so Netlify's 100 GB is roughly 1.2 million views. What breaks first, in order:
- Build minutes on sites that rebuild thousands of pages on every commit.
- File count caps when a generator emits one file per tag, per author, per pagination page.
- Plan terms, not quotas. A site that gets popular on a plan that forbids commercial use gets suspended for the wrong reason.
The trap that costs people their ad account
AdSense verifies site ownership by asking you to place a record on the domain. That works on example.com and fails on yourproject.pages.dev, because you do not control the apex record of a domain you do not own. Buy the domain first (about $10 per year), attach it to the host, then apply.
Decision rule
- Text, tools, docs, data pages → Cloudflare Pages.
- Needs serverless functions or form handling → Netlify, until build minutes become the constraint.
- Next.js with a commercial plan → Vercel paid, because Hobby forbids the commercial part.
- Repository documentation only → GitHub Pages.
How to keep this table honest
Run the same four pages through a diff weekly: fetch each limits page, hash the body, and alert on change. Re-verify any row that changed, update the date, and note what changed. A table that is silently six months stale is worse than no table, because people cite it.
Frequently asked questions
Can I run AdSense on a free static host?
Yes on Cloudflare Pages, Netlify and Vercel paid plans. Vercel Hobby prohibits commercial use, and GitHub Pages is not intended for e-commerce. AdSense also needs a custom domain you control, because site ownership verification fails on shared subdomains like *.pages.dev.
Is unlimited bandwidth really unlimited?
Cloudflare describes Pages bandwidth as unmetered, with fair-use protection against abuse such as serving large media files or proxying third-party content. It is not a guaranteed throughput contract, but normal static HTML sites never hit a metered cap.
Which host is cheapest for a site with AdSense?
Cloudflare Pages on a custom domain: about $10 per year for the domain and $0 for hosting. The cost that matters is not hosting, it is the domain, because ad networks will not verify ownership of a subdomain you do not control.
Sources
- Cloudflare Pages limitsbuilds, files, size caps
- Netlify pricing and free tierbandwidth and build minutes
- Vercel pricing and fair useHobby plan terms
- GitHub Pages usage limitssize, bandwidth, build rate
Cite this page
Your Name (2026). “Free Static Hosting Limits Compared: Cloudflare Pages vs Netlify vs Vercel vs GitHub Pages”. Actual Database. https://actualdatabase.com/free-static-hosting-limits/