The free Render alternative that never spins down
Render's free tier is nice for demos, but web services sleep after 15 minutes and cold-start on the next hit — a killer for cron jobs, webhooks, and anything a user or API might touch unpredictably. Cheaploy runs the same containerized service on your own Oracle Cloud VM: always on, 2 ARM cores, 12 GB RAM, and $0.
Side-by-side
| Feature | Render Free | Cheaploy + Oracle Always Free |
|---|---|---|
| Web service uptime | Spins down after 15 min idle | Always on |
| RAM | 512 MB | 12 GB |
| CPU | 0.1 shared | 2 ARM cores |
| Managed Postgres | Free, deleted after 90 days | Free, no expiry (Oracle Autonomous DB) |
| Background workers | $7 / mo each | Included |
| Cron jobs | $1 / mo per job | Included |
| Bandwidth | 100 GB / mo | 10 TB / mo |
When Render still wins
- You want a fully managed PaaS and are OK paying $7-$25/mo to remove the free-tier limits.
- You value auto-scaling across multiple instances without operating Kubernetes.
When Cheaploy wins
- Cold starts break your webhooks, cron, or user experience.
- Your 90-day Postgres just got wiped for the second time.
- You want workers, cron, database, and web all on one free bill.
Frequently asked
Does Cheaploy support Render's Blueprints / render.yaml?+
Yes. Point Cheaploy at a repo containing render.yaml and we translate the service definitions, env vars, and disk mounts into an equivalent Docker + systemd stack on your Oracle VM. Most projects deploy without edits.
What about Render's managed Postgres?+
The free Postgres on Render is deleted after 90 days. Cheaploy provisions Oracle's Autonomous Database (2 always-free instances, 20 GB each, no expiry) or spins up self-hosted Postgres on the same VM.
Can I run background workers and cron jobs for free?+
Yes — those are Render's paid tiers ($7 each). On Cheaploy they're just systemd units on the same free VM. No extra bill.
Deploy your project for $0
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