Free hosting plans get discontinued more often than paid ones — Hostinger's own free tier and 000webhost are recent examples. Verify a plan is still active before relying on it.
"Free hosting" means different things depending on what you're building. A static portfolio, a WordPress blog, and a developer project all have different best options — here's how they break down.
By use case
| You're building | Best free option | Why |
|---|---|---|
| A no-code business site | Wix or Webador | Visual editor + hosting bundled together |
| A blog or content site | WordPress.com free plan | Purpose-built for publishing, stable and beginner-friendly |
| A static site, portfolio, or docs | GitHub Pages | No cost ceiling, connects cleanly to a custom domain |
| A Jamstack / front-end project | Netlify | Fast static-site deploys, generous free tier |
| A Next.js or React app | Vercel | Built specifically for modern JS frameworks |
| A simple internal or classroom page | Google Sites | Zero setup, fine for non-public use |
Traditional shared hosting still exists — with caveats
A handful of providers still offer genuinely free traditional (cPanel-style) hosting with real server resources — current examples include WebHostMost and InfinityFree. These can run PHP applications like a self-hosted WordPress install, which builder-based hosting can't do. The trade-off is reliability and support: free-tier shared hosting is a lower priority for the provider, and free plans in this category have a track record of being discontinued or heavily restricted over time.
What builder-hosted plans give up
Wix's free hosting is genuinely capable, but the free plan keeps you on a Wix subdomain and free-tier storage/bandwidth caps — fine for early-stage testing, not ideal for a site you're trying to grow seriously. See our website builder comparison for the full breakdown of what each plan includes.
The developer-platform advantage
If you're comfortable with even basic static files (or a framework like Next.js), GitHub Pages, Netlify, and Vercel are worth the small learning curve. All three let you connect a real custom domain for free, with no forced branding and generous bandwidth limits — this entire site runs on that exact stack.
The bottom line
There's no single "best" free host — the right pick depends entirely on whether you want a visual editor, a publishing platform, or full control over the code. What's consistent across good options in 2026 is that a custom domain no longer has to cost anything beyond the domain registration itself.