How to Host a Project for Free: GitHub Pages, Netlify, Vercel — When to Use Each

Before we dive deep into each platform, let's get the lay of the land. All three of these services offer genuinely free tiers (not trials, actually free), but they're built for different use cases. Think of it like choosing between a bicycle, a car, and a motorcycle — they all get you places, but which one you need depends on where you're going.

GitHub Pages is your reliable bicycle. It's straightforward, gets the job done for static sites, and there's almost zero configuration. Netlify? That's your versatile car with all the features — automatic deployments, form handling, serverless functions, the works. And Vercel is like a finely-tuned sports car specifically designed for JavaScript frameworks, especially React and Next.js.

The free tiers are surprisingly generous. GitHub Pages gives you unlimited public repositories with automatic SSL. Netlify offers 100GB bandwidth per month and 300 build minutes. Vercel provides 100GB bandwidth and unlimited deployments for personal projects. Honestly, most hobby projects won't even come close to hitting these limits.

Let me tell you why GitHub Pages has a special place in my heart. It was the first platform where I successfully deployed a website, and the simplicity was just *chef's kiss*. If your project is already on GitHub (and let's be honest, it probably is), you're literally one click away from having a live website.

GitHub Pages is perfect when you're building something straightforward — a portfolio, project documentation, a landing page, or a simple blog using Jekyll. It's not trying to be everything for everyone, and that's actually its strength. You push your code to a specific branch, and boom, it's live at username.github.io/repo-name. No build configuration files, no deployment pipelines to debug at midnight.

The catch? It's really designed for static sites. You can use Jekyll (which GitHub has built-in support for), but if you're thinking about using a modern framework like Next.js with server-side rendering or API routes, you're going to have a bad time. GitHub Pages serves flat HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files — nothing more, nothing less.

One thing that frustrated me initially was the build time limit. You get 10 minutes per build, which sounds like a lot until you're working with a larger Jekyll site with hundreds of pages. I've had builds timeout on documentation sites, and trust me, debugging why your Jekyll build is slow is not fun. But for most projects? Ten minutes is plenty.

Okay, so Netlify is where things get interesting. If GitHub Pages is a bicycle and Vercel is a sports car, Netlify is that Swiss Army knife you didn't know you needed until you had it. I remember the first time I used Netlify's form handling feature — I literally laughed out loud because I'd just spent three hours trying to set up a contact form with a third-party service, and Netlify did it with a single HTML attribute.

What makes Netlify special is its flexibility. It supports pretty much any static site generator you can throw at it — Gatsby, Hugo, 11ty, Next.js (static export), Jekyll, and dozens more. The build system is intelligent enough to detect your framework and configure itself automatically. I've deployed Vue, React, Svelte, and plain HTML sites on Netlify, and it just... works.

The feature set is genuinely impressive for a free tier. You get deploy previews (game-changer for collaboration), form handling without any backend code, serverless functions powered by AWS Lambda, split testing for A/B experiments, and even basic analytics. I use Netlify's serverless functions all the time for small API endpoints — it's perfect when you need just a little bit of backend logic without spinning up a whole server.

But here's where I need to be real with you — Netlify can be overwhelming if you're just starting out. The dashboard has a million settings, the configuration file (netlify.toml) has a learning curve, and sometimes the automatic framework detection gets it wrong and you'll spend an hour debugging why your build is failing. Once you get past that initial learning curve though? It's incredibly powerful.

Full disclosure: I'm slightly biased toward Vercel because it's made by the same team that builds Next.js, and I build a lot of Next.js apps. But even if you're not using Next.js, Vercel is ridiculously good at what it does. The first time I deployed a Next.js app to Vercel, I was genuinely shocked — from git push to production URL took maybe 30 seconds. No configuration file, no build settings, just instant deployment.

Vercel is laser-focused on the modern JavaScript ecosystem. While it supports other frameworks, it really shines with React, Next.js, Vue, Nuxt, and similar frameworks. The platform handles server-side rendering, API routes, incremental static regeneration, and all those fancy Next.js features without you having to think about infrastructure. It just works, and it works fast.

What I love most about Vercel is the developer experience. Every git push creates a preview deployment with its own URL. The Edge Network is incredibly fast — your site gets cached at data centers around the world automatically. The analytics dashboard is actually useful (unlike most free analytics that are basically useless). And if you need environment variables for different branches, Vercel makes that painless too.

The free tier is genuinely generous. You get 100GB bandwidth, unlimited deployments, automatic HTTPS, and here's the kicker — 6,000 build minutes per month. That's 20x what Netlify offers on the free tier. For personal projects and portfolios, you'll never hit these limits. Ever. I've been using Vercel's free tier for years and I've never even come close to the bandwidth cap.

The only real downside? If you're not using a JavaScript framework, Vercel might be overkill. It's like buying a Ferrari to drive to the grocery store — sure, it'll get you there, but maybe a simpler option makes more sense. For static HTML sites or Jekyll blogs, GitHub Pages or Netlify might be better fits.

Alright, let's cut through the noise and help you make a decision. I've deployed projects on all three platforms, and here's my honest take on when to use each one. This isn't about which platform is "best" — they're all excellent at what they do. It's about matching your project's needs with the right tool.

Think of it like this: if I'm building a simple portfolio with HTML, CSS, and vanilla JavaScript, I'm reaching for GitHub Pages every time. No questions asked. It's fast, simple, and I don't need any bells and whistles. But if I'm building a marketing site for a startup and I need contact forms, A/B testing, and serverless functions? That's Netlify territory. And when I'm spinning up my next React or Next.js project? Vercel wins, hands down.

The biggest mistake I see developers make is choosing based on hype rather than requirements. Yes, Vercel is trendy right now, but if you're hosting a Jekyll documentation site, you're just making your life harder for no reason. Match the tool to the job, not the job to the tool you want to learn.