Netlify Free Plan Limits in 2026: Credits, Bandwidth and Pauses
Netlify free plan limits explained: 300 credits a month, what each deploy and GB costs, what stays free, and what happens when you hit the limit.
6 min read
Netlify's Free plan gives new accounts 300 credits a month. A production deploy costs 15 credits, bandwidth costs 20 credits per GB and web requests cost 2 credits per 10,000. Deploy previews and Netlify Forms are free. When you reach 300 credits, Netlify pauses every site on the account until the next cycle. Accounts created before 4 September 2025 may still be on the older legacy limits.
This post explains how the credit model works, what a month of credits buys, what happens at the limit and how to stretch your allowance. If you're still choosing a host, our guide to static site free hosting compares every major option.
Limits checked 14 October 2026 against each provider's official docs. Free plans change often; check the linked pages before you commit.
How does the Netlify free plan work now?
Netlify moved new accounts to credit-based pricing plans in September 2025. Instead of separate allowances for bandwidth, build minutes and functions, you get one monthly pool of credits that every metered action draws from.
On the Free plan that pool is 300 credits. It's a hard limit: you can't buy recharge packs, unused credits don't roll over, and the count resets at the start of each billing cycle.
What does each action cost in Netlify credits?
These rates come from Netlify's how credits work page and its pricing page.
| Action | Credit cost |
|---|---|
| Production deploy | 15 credits each |
| Bandwidth | 20 credits per GB |
| Web requests | 2 credits per 10,000 |
| Compute (functions) | 10 credits per GB-hour |
| AI inference | 180 credits per USD |
| Build minutes | Not counted |
| Deploy previews, branch deploys, failed deploys, rollbacks | 0 credits |
| Netlify Forms submissions | 0 credits |
Build minutes no longer count at all, which is a real improvement for slow static site generators. The flip side is that every production deploy now has a fixed price, however quick the build.
Functions have no separate free invocation tier on credit plans. They're metered as compute, so a busy serverless function eats into the same 300 credits as your bandwidth.
What does 300 credits actually buy?
The answer depends on your mix of deploys and traffic. These worked examples are our own arithmetic from the rates above, so treat them as estimates rather than Netlify figures.
| Scenario (estimate) | Credits used | What's left |
|---|---|---|
| Bandwidth only, no deploys | 300 credits ≈ 15 GB | Nothing |
| 10 production deploys | 150 credits | About 7.5 GB of bandwidth |
| 20 production deploys | 300 credits | No bandwidth left at all |
| 4 deploys + 500,000 requests | 60 + 100 = 160 credits | About 7 GB of bandwidth |
The last example shows that requests add up too: half a million page and asset requests costs 100 credits before you count the bytes they transfer.
For a small portfolio or documentation site that deploys a few times a month and serves a few gigabytes, 300 credits is comfortable. For a site that deploys on every commit to main, or one that gets a spike from a popular post, the budget can disappear quickly.
What is free on Netlify regardless of credits?
A good part of Netlify's appeal on Free is that several features cost nothing:
- Unlimited deploy previews for pull requests, plus branch deploys and rollbacks.
- Netlify Forms, which are unlimited and free on credit-based plans.
- Custom domains with free SSL.
- Up to 500 projects on one account.
The Free plan also has some fixed restrictions. You get one concurrent build and one owner seat with no extra team members (unlimited Reviewers are allowed). Private projects are owner-only, so you can't connect private repos owned by a Git organisation, and password protection isn't available.
What happens when you hit 300 credits on Netlify?
This is the part to understand before you rely on the Free plan. According to Netlify's credit-based billing FAQ, when you reach the limit all projects on the account are paused, not just the one that used the credits.
While paused:
- Visitors see a "Site not available" page.
- Your sites serve no traffic.
- Netlify Forms stop accepting submissions.
- You can't make production deploys.
Sites come back when the next billing cycle starts or when you upgrade. Netlify sends alerts at 50%, 75%, 90% and 100% of your credits, so keep the account email somewhere you'll see it.
Legacy vs credit-based Netlify plans: which are you on?
Accounts created from 4 September 2025 are on credit-based plans. Older accounts stay on legacy plans unless they choose to opt in to credits, and that switch is irreversible. Your team's billing settings show the plan name.
The legacy Free plan works quite differently:
| Allowance | Legacy Free | Credit-based Free |
|---|---|---|
| Bandwidth | 100 GB/month | 20 credits per GB (≈15 GB if only bandwidth, estimate) |
| Build minutes | 300/month | Not counted |
| Production deploys | Not metered separately | 15 credits each |
| Form submissions | 100 per site per month | Unlimited |
| Function invocations | 125,000 per site per month | Metered as compute |
| Edge function invocations | 1 million | Metered |
| Team members | 1 | 1 owner + unlimited Reviewers |
If you're on a legacy account with a high-traffic static site, the 100 GB bandwidth allowance is far more generous than what 300 credits buys. If you deploy constantly or rely on Netlify Forms, credits may suit you better. Because opting in can't be undone, compare your last few months of usage before switching.
How can you make Netlify credits last longer?
Most savings come from deploying less often and transferring fewer bytes.
- Batch production deploys. Merge work on a branch and use free deploy previews to check it, then ship to production once.
- Turn off auto-publishing if your workflow pushes to the production branch many times a day.
- Compress and resize images. Images are usually most of a static site's bandwidth.
- Set long cache headers for fingerprinted assets so returning visitors don't download them again.
- Move large downloads elsewhere. Videos, PDFs and release files can live on a dedicated file or video host.
- Watch functions. Since compute and requests share the same pool, keep serverless functions short and avoid unnecessary calls.
Is Netlify's free plan still a good choice?
For small sites it still is. Free deploy previews, unlimited forms and a polished workflow are real strengths, and Netlify's pricing pages don't restrict commercial use on Free. The weak spots are the small bandwidth budget for new accounts and the account-wide pause at the limit.
If your traffic is unpredictable, compare it with hosts that handle limits differently. Cloudflare Pages doesn't meter static requests, Vercel's Hobby plan has a 100 GB transfer allowance but is non-commercial only, and our Netlify vs Vercel vs Cloudflare Pages comparison puts them side by side.
Add a working contact form to your static site
On Netlify, Netlify Forms will handle a simple contact form, but submissions stop while your account is paused, and the form only works while you host there. If you'd rather keep forms independent of your host, point your form's action at a FormSubmit endpoint: the free plan includes 1 form and 50 submissions a month. Our Netlify static site form guide shows the setup, including how to stop Netlify's form detection clashing with it.
