Can I Use Free Hosting for a Commercial Site? (2026 Rules)

You can use some free hosting for a commercial site, but not all of it. Vercel's Hobby plan is non-commercial only, and GitHub Pages isn't allowed to be used to run an online business. Netlify's and Cloudflare's pricing and limits pages don't restrict commercial use on their free plans, so those are the usual free options for a business or client site.

Below we quote each provider's wording, compare them in one table and give practical advice for freelancers and agencies. For a broader comparison of limits, see our guide to free static page hosting.

Limits checked 14 October 2026 against each provider's official docs. Free plans change often; check the linked pages before you commit.

Commercial use on free static hosts at a glance

Host and plan	Commercial use on free plan	What the docs say
Vercel Hobby	Not allowed	"Restricted to non-commercial personal use only"
GitHub Pages	Not for running an online business	"Not intended for or allowed to be used as a free web-hosting service to run your online business"
Netlify Free	No restriction found	Pricing and plan pages don't restrict commercial use
Cloudflare Pages Free	No restriction found	Pages limits and pricing pages don't restrict commercial use

Vercel Hobby commercial use: what counts?

Vercel is the most explicit. Its fair use guidelines say: "Hobby teams are restricted to non-commercial personal use only. All commercial usage of the platform requires either a Pro or Enterprise plan."

The definition is broad. Vercel treats a deployment as commercial if it's used for the financial gain of anyone involved in any part of its production, including a paid employee or consultant writing the code. Its examples include:

• Any method of requesting or processing payment from visitors
• Advertising the sale of a product or service
• Receiving payment to create, update or host the site
• Affiliate linking as the primary purpose of the site
• Including advertisements, such as display ads

Asking for donations does not count as commercial usage, so an open-source project with a sponsor link is fine.

The practical upshot: a business's marketing site, a freelancer's client project, an ad-supported blog or a SaaS landing page all need Vercel Pro. A personal portfolio, a side project with no revenue or a hobby blog with a donation button can stay on Hobby. Our Vercel free plan limits post covers the usage limits too.

GitHub Pages commercial use

GitHub's Pages limits page says GitHub Pages is "not intended for or allowed to be used as a free web-hosting service to run your online business". It also says Pages shouldn't be used for sensitive transactions such as sending passwords or credit card numbers.

This is narrower than Vercel's rule. It targets using Pages to run a business, rather than any site connected to money. Documentation for a company's open-source library is a typical, accepted use. An online shop, a booking system or a site that runs a business is not what Pages is for.

There's also a repository rule: on GitHub Free, Pages works only from public repositories, so client code would be visible to everyone. See GitHub Pages limits.

Netlify free commercial use

We couldn't find any commercial-use restriction on Netlify's pricing page or its credit-based plan docs. That makes Netlify Free a common choice for small business sites, but read Netlify's terms of service before you rely on it.

The bigger risk for a business is the limit, not the licence. On the credit-based Free plan, all projects pause when you reach 300 credits in a month, and visitors see "Site not available" until the next cycle or an upgrade. For a business, a site that disappears mid-month is a real cost. Free also allows only one owner with no team members.

Cloudflare Pages commercial use

Cloudflare's Pages limits and pricing pages don't restrict commercial use on the free plan, as far as we could find. Check Cloudflare's terms for your use case.

For commercial sites this is the most forgiving free option: static asset requests are free and unlimited, so traffic spikes don't take the site offline. The limits that do apply are builds (500 a month), files (20,000 per site) and Pages Functions, which share the Workers Free allowance of 100,000 requests a day. More in Cloudflare Pages free plan limits.

Grey areas: is my site commercial?

Plenty of sites sit somewhere in between. A few common cases, read against the published wording:

• A personal portfolio that helps you get hired. Vercel's examples focus on payments, advertising, paid development and ads, so a portfolio with none of those is likely to read as personal use. If it advertises a paid service you sell, it starts to look like "advertising the sale of a product or service".
• A blog with a few affiliate links. Vercel names affiliate linking "as the primary purpose" of a site, so incidental links are different from an affiliate site. Display ads, however, are listed as commercial.
• An open-source project with sponsors. Donations aren't commercial on Vercel, and project sites are a core GitHub Pages use.
• A side project that starts charging. The day you add a checkout, it's commercial on Vercel Hobby. Plan the move to Pro or another host before launch, not after.

When in doubt, the cautious reading is the one that won't get your site suspended.

Advice for freelancers and agencies building client sites

If you build sites for paying clients, the rules above narrow your free options quickly.

• Don't use Vercel Hobby for client work. Being paid to build or host the site is commercial use, even if the client's site itself sells nothing.
• Avoid GitHub Pages for business sites. It's not meant to run an online business, and a free account needs a public repo.
• Put the site on the client's account. Creating the hosting account in the client's name keeps ownership clear, makes handover easy and means the client controls billing if they upgrade.
• Size the free plan to the site. Cloudflare Pages handles traffic spikes on Free. On Netlify, estimate bandwidth against 300 credits, roughly 15 GB a month if nothing else is used.
• Budget for a paid plan when it matters. If downtime would cost the client money, a paid plan is cheap insurance.
• Keep the site portable. Avoid host-only features where you can, so moving later is just a DNS change.

Client situation	Sensible free option	Watch out for
Brochure site, modest traffic	Cloudflare Pages or Netlify Free	Netlify's credit cap
Site expecting traffic spikes	Cloudflare Pages	Build and Functions limits
Next.js app for a business	Vercel Pro (paid) or Cloudflare	Hobby isn't allowed
Open-source project docs	GitHub Pages	Public repo requirement

Add a working contact form to your static site

Almost every commercial site needs an enquiry form, and static hosts serve files without processing form POSTs (Netlify Forms on Netlify is the exception). Point the form's action at a FormSubmit endpoint and enquiries arrive by email, on any host and any client account. The free plan includes 1 form and 50 submissions a month. Set one up with our email form or see static website forms for the options.