Pricing
Free for demos & staging. Pay when traffic grows.
One always-on web service plus Postgres and Redis on Free — 1,000 requests/mo, no sleep cycle. Hobby is $1 when you need more. Pro when you're shipping for real.
Free
Demos, staging, and small always-on backends.
$0/mo
- 1 web service — always on, never sleeps
- 1,000 HTTP requests / month
- Managed Postgres (quota)
- Redis / Key Value (quota)
- Deploy from Git · free TLS
- Community support
Hobby
More headroom when Free quotas feel tight.
$1/mo
- Everything in Free, higher quotas
- 50,000 requests / month
- 512 MB RAM · shared CPU
- Free TLS + subdomain
- Community support
Pro
Real apps and small teams shipping daily.
$7/mo
- Unlimited services
- Docker Compose stacks
- Autoscaling + zero-downtime deploys
- Higher DB & Redis quotas
- Cron jobs + custom domains
Scale
Pay for the compute you actually use.
Usage
- Everything in Pro
- Dedicated CPU & memory
- Read replicas + PITR backups
- Private VPC networking
- Priority support + SLA
Quotas are fair-use and may change before launch. Free never spins down by design — that's the promise. USD · Cancel anytime.
Why pay for a backend that sleeps?
Demos, staging APIs, and side projects shouldn't need a paid plan just to stay awake.
| Feature | Runko | Render | Heroku |
|---|---|---|---|
| Starting price | Free | $7 / mo* | $5 / mo |
| Free web service sleeps? | Never | Yes (spins down) | n/a |
| Free Postgres + Redis | ✓ | limited / add-on | — |
| Docker Compose deploys | ✓ | — | — |
| Deploy from Git | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Always-on from $0 | ✓ | — | — |
*Render free spins down after idle; paid plans start higher. Competitor pricing can change.
Frequently asked questions
Is Free really always on?
Yes — that's the promise. One web service on Free stays up; it does not spin down after idle the way typical free tiers do. Free includes 1,000 HTTP requests per month so the tier stays sustainable.
What's included on Free?
One web service (1,000 requests/mo), a managed Postgres database, and Redis / Key Value — all subject to quotas. Free TLS and a subdomain. Built for demos, staging APIs, and small apps that shouldn't cost $5–7/mo just to stay awake.
Why not just use other free tiers?
Most free tiers sleep, throttle hard, or skip databases. Paying $5+ just to keep a demo or staging API awake is the default workaround. Runko Free is meant to replace that without pretending you're running production traffic.
How can Hobby be $1?
Lean defaults and clear quotas — not a marked-up middle tier. Hobby bumps you to 50,000 requests/mo when Free feels tight, still a fraction of typical PaaS starter plans.
Do you support Docker Compose?
Yes on Pro and above. Push a docker-compose.yml and each service becomes its own workload with private networking and depends_on ordering.
Can I migrate from another host?
Yes — same Git repo, bring your env vars, point at Runko Postgres. Waitlist members get migration help when you onboard.