Koyeb vs Render
A side-by-side, data-driven comparison of Koyeb and Render — pricing, free tiers and capabilities.
Two Heroku-style managed hosts at similar entry prices: Render is the more established all-in-one with managed Postgres and a genuine free tier, while Koyeb leans serverless with global edge and scale-to-zero — but Koyeb closed its free tier to new signups after its 2026 Mistral acquisition, which tilts hobby projects toward Render.
At a glance
- Render has a free tier — note: Free instance spins down after ~15 min idle (not always-on, ~1 min cold start) and is capped at 750 instance-hours/month per workspace — fine for demos, not 24/7 production; Koyeb does not.
- At a medium always-on instance, Koyeb is ~$10.71/mo vs Render ~$25/mo — Koyeb is the cheaper estimate.
Specs side by side
Estimated cost
Estimated monthly cost of a single always-on service — estimates, not quotes. Try the calculator for your own traffic. “—” means no verified price for that tier.
| Koyeb | Render | |
|---|---|---|
| Small (~0.5 vCPU / 512MB–1GB) | $5.36 (lower) | $7 |
| Medium (~1 vCPU / 2GB) | $10.71 (lower) | $25 |
| Large (~2 vCPU / 4GB) | $21.43 (lower) | $85 |
| Egress ($/GB) | $0.02 (lower) | $0.15 |
Pros & cons
Our editorial assessment — not vendor-stated facts. Last reviewed 2026-07-16.
Koyeb
Pros
- Simple Git-to-deploy and container workflow that abstracts away most infrastructure management
- Runs workloads on bare-metal-backed microVMs with global geographic distribution
- Scale-to-zero plus per-second billing, so idle services cost little
- Expanding GPU and AI-inference capabilities that go beyond a typical PaaS
Cons
- The Mistral AI acquisition is steering Koyeb toward AI infrastructure (positioned as part of Mistral Compute), creating uncertainty about its long-term commitment to general-purpose web hosting
- Following the acquisition, the free (Starter) tier is closed to new sign-ups: new accounts must start on a paid plan, and a credit card is required to register
- Smaller ecosystem, integration catalog, and community than the major clouds or larger PaaS competitors
- Managed data services center on Postgres, with no broad catalog of managed databases, queues, or caches
Render
Pros
- Low-ops developer experience — deploy full-stack apps from Git with minimal configuration
- Broad coverage in one platform: apps, workers, cron jobs, static sites, durable workflows, and managed databases
- Per-service compute plans billed by the second, keeping costs proportional to actual usage per workload
- Managed networking, TLS, preview environments, and autoscaling included without extra setup
Cons
- No general-purpose HTTP serverless/functions product (no AWS Lambda-style FaaS); that remains a planned feature request with no committed timeline. Render Workflows adds durable, scale-to-zero background execution but is an orchestration product, not a Lambda replacement for request-driven code
- Limited regional footprint (Oregon, Ohio, Virginia, Frankfurt, and Singapore) with per-region private networks and no cross-region private networking, global load balancing, or automatic cross-region failover
- Managed databases are limited to Postgres and Redis-compatible Key Value, with less low-level infrastructure control than AWS or GCP and no bring-your-own-cloud option
- Free-tier web services spin down after 15 minutes of inactivity (cold start on the next request) and free Postgres databases expire 30 days after creation (deleted after a short grace period); total cost can climb as you add more paid services
Bottom line
Pick Koyeb for serverless-style container apps deployed to the global edge. Pick Render for teams leaving Heroku that want managed DB + services in one place.
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Frequently asked questions
- What is the difference between Koyeb and Render?
- Koyeb: A serverless platform to deploy apps and Docker containers globally with autoscaling. Render: A managed cloud for web services, static sites, cron jobs and managed Postgres/Redis, widely recommended as the closest modern Heroku swap.
- Is Koyeb or Render cheaper?
- For a medium always-on instance, Koyeb is about $10.71/mo and Render about $25/mo, so Koyeb is the cheaper estimate. Actual cost depends on your usage — try the calculator.
- Does Koyeb have a free tier?
- No.
- Does Render have a free tier?
- Yes. Free instance spins down after ~15 min idle (not always-on, ~1 min cold start) and is capped at 750 instance-hours/month per workspace — fine for demos, not 24/7 production.
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