Render Pricing Calculator

How Render pricing works in 2026

Render uses fixed instance tiers, not serverless metering. You choose a tier and pay a flat monthly fee for always-on compute: Starter at $7/month (0.5 vCPU, 512 MB RAM), Standard at $25/month (1 vCPU, 2 GB), Pro at $85/month (2 vCPU, 4 GB), and Pro Plus at $175/month (4 vCPU, 8 GB). Bandwidth is 100 GB included per service per month, then $30 per additional 100 GB. Build minutes are 400 per month included, then ~$1.50 per additional 100 minutes.

The predictability is Render's biggest selling point — no surprise bills from traffic spikes, no per-request or per-invocation charges. But the fixed tiers mean you're paying for capacity whether you use it or not. A lightly-used Starter instance at $7/month is excellent value; an underutilized Pro instance at $85/month is not.

What surprises teams about Render costs

The first surprise is service count. A typical Render deployment has a web service, a PostgreSQL database, a Redis instance, and a background worker — each running as a separate service with its own monthly fee. A $25 Standard web service plus a $19 Basic Postgres plus a $7 Redis worker = $51/month before you serve a single request. Teams budget for the web service and forget about the supporting services.

The second surprise is free tier spin-down. Free plan services spin down after 15 minutes of inactivity and take 30–60 seconds to spin back up on the next request. This is fine for personal projects but unacceptable for user-facing production apps. The first paid tier (Starter at $7/month) stays always-on.

Render pricing examples

Hobby project: Starter web service ($7) + free Postgres (90-day limit) = $7/month while the database is free, then $7 + $7 = $14/month once you upgrade to Basic Postgres.

Startup SaaS: Standard web service ($25) + Basic 1GB Postgres ($19) = $44/month. Add a Redis worker at Starter ($7) and you're at $51/month.

Growing SaaS: Pro web service ($85) + Standard Postgres ($90) = $175/month. Bandwidth overage can add $30–90/month at 300–400 GB transfer.

Scale: Pro Plus ($175) or multiple Pro instances behind Render's load balancer. Bandwidth at 10+ TB becomes a significant cost: $300+ in overage alone. $500+/month total.

How this calculator works

The calculator picks a web service tier based on your estimated monthly API request volume, then adds bandwidth overage (above the 100 GB included) and build minute overage (above the 400 included). Database and additional services are not modeled — add them manually using the pricing notes above. Instance sizing is a starting recommendation; right-size against your actual CPU and memory utilization metrics.

Caveats

Render's pricing page is JavaScript-rendered and could not be automatically verified in early 2026 — rates shown are based on publicly available documentation from 2025–Q4. Confirm current rates at render.com/pricing before making a purchasing decision. This calculator models the web service only — PostgreSQL, Redis, cron jobs, and background workers are priced as separate services.

Frequently asked questions

How much does Render cost per month?

Render's paid plans start at $7/month for a Starter web service (0.5 vCPU, 512 MB RAM). A typical production SaaS with a Standard web service and Basic PostgreSQL runs $44–50/month. Database, Redis, and background worker services add to the total.

Does Render have a free plan?

Yes. Render offers a free tier for web services and PostgreSQL. Free web services spin down after 15 minutes of inactivity, causing 30–60 second cold starts on the next request. Free PostgreSQL databases expire after 90 days. Neither is suitable for production use — the $7 Starter tier is the minimum for always-on availability.

Render vs Railway — which is cheaper for a SaaS app?

For small apps, Railway's Hobby plan ($5/mo) often wins on price. For medium apps, Render's Standard tier ($25) competes well with Railway's equivalent compute (1 vCPU + 2 GB = $30/mo on Railway). At large scale, Railway's per-second billing can be cheaper if you don't need the full instance capacity constantly. Use both calculators with the same workload to compare.

Is Render good for Next.js apps?

Yes — Render supports Node.js deployments and works well with Next.js. You'll run the Next.js server as a long-running process on a Render web service, which gets always-on availability and auto-deploy from Git. The main limitation versus Vercel is that you don't get native edge routing or ISR — Next.js features that depend on Vercel's edge network won't work.