Most "cheap PaaS" comparisons price the app container and stop there. That is the smaller half of the bill. A web app needs a database, and the database is where free tiers turn out to be trials, and where per-second billing quietly becomes the biggest line on the invoice.
So every entry below is priced as one always-on app container plus one small PostgreSQL, in Europe. The list is ordered by that total, cheapest first, which is why Hostim is at the top — it is the cheapest, and the section says plainly what you give up for that price.
Hostim
Germany · flat priceOne app container plus a managed PostgreSQL for €2.50 a month, because the database free tier is permanent rather than a trial. It is the cheapest complete answer here, and the narrowest platform here.
| App | €2.50/month, 1 vCPU and 1 GB RAM (plan sa-1-1) |
|---|---|
| Database | PostgreSQL 256 MB free permanently; €1/month for 1 GB, €5/month for 5 GB |
| Monthly total for a small stack | €2.50 |
| Traffic | Included. No egress or ingress charge |
| EU status | German company, dedicated bare-metal servers in Germany, no hyperscaler underneath |
Where it is strong
- The free database tier has no time limit and no cap on how many instances you create.
- PostgreSQL and MySQL are replicated with automatic failover on every plan, including the free one.
- No usage meter anywhere, so next month’s bill equals this month’s bill.
Where it falls short
- One region today, in Germany. More are planned; there is no US or Asia region yet, and no edge network.
- No object storage, CDN, managed DNS or transactional email.
- Hostim.dev price list — Hostim.dev (checked 2026-08-06)
- Managed PostgreSQL — high availability — Hostim.dev docs (checked 2026-08-06)
Hetzner Cloud with Docker (self-managed)
Germany · do it yourselfThe cheapest way to run several apps and databases at once, and a poor deal for exactly one. The €5.99 buys hardware, not a platform: TLS, backups, restarts and patching are yours.
| App | Hetzner CX23 (2 vCPU, 4 GB) at €5.49/month plus €0.50 for the IPv4 address |
|---|---|
| Database | PostgreSQL in a container on the same box — free, and entirely your responsibility |
| Monthly total for a small stack | €5.99, for as many apps as the machine fits |
| Traffic | 20 TB included on the instance |
| EU status | German company, German and Finnish data centres |
Where it is strong
- Unlimited containers on one fixed-price machine — the cost per app drops with every app you add.
- Full root access, no platform restrictions, no per-service fee.
- 20 TB of included traffic is far more than any managed platform in this list gives you.
Where it falls short
- A default Postgres install is not tuned: in our benchmark a stock Hetzner node did 1,303 pgbench TPS against 2,708 on a managed plan of the same size.
- One machine, one point of failure. Backups and failover are projects you build.
- Hetzner raised prices on 15 June 2026, and the CPX22 went from €7.99 to €19.49 — a 144% increase. Fixed cost is fixed until the supplier changes it.
- Hetzner price adjustment notice (15 June 2026) — Hetzner (checked 2026-08-06)
- PostgreSQL benchmark: AWS RDS vs Hostim vs self-hosted — Hostim.dev blog, July 2026 (checked 2026-08-06)
Fly.io
US company · EU regionsVery cheap for a development stack, and one of the more expensive options here once you want a managed database. The gap between those two numbers is the thing to plan for.
| App | $2.32/month for a shared-cpu-1x machine with 256 MB left running; a 1 GB machine is about $6.79/month (Fly’s own examples, sjc region) |
|---|---|
| Database | Managed Postgres Basic (shared-2x, 1 GB) is $38/month plus $0.28 per provisioned GB of storage, with high availability, backups and pooling included. The legacy self-operated Fly Postgres is about $2/month for a single-node dev cluster |
| Monthly total for a small stack | About $4.30 with the legacy self-operated Postgres; about $40 with Managed Postgres |
| Traffic | Egress $0.02/GB in the EU and US; volumes $0.15/GB-month |
| EU status | EU regions available; US company |
Where it is strong
- Machines stop when idle and then cost only their disk.
- Cheapest per-second compute in this list, with fine-grained region placement.
- Egress at $0.02/GB is cheap if your app serves files.
Where it falls short
- No free allowance for new accounts — billing starts with the first machine.
- Managed Postgres starts at $38/month for 1 GB of RAM, so the cheap-compute story stops at the database.
- The invoice has many small lines, which makes forecasting harder than a flat plan.
- Fly.io pricing — Fly.io (checked 2026-08-06)
Render
US company · Frankfurt regionThe friendliest of the managed options, with a free tier that genuinely works for demos as long as you accept cold starts. Once the app has to stay awake and keep a database, the bill is about five times the cheapest option here.
| App | Free instance (0.1 CPU, 512 MB); Starter web service $7/month for 0.5 CPU and 512 MB, on a free Hobby workspace |
|---|---|
| Database | Basic-256mb $6/month (0.1 CPU, 256 MB), Basic-1gb $19/month, plus storage at $0.30/GB-month. The free database is capped at 30 days |
| Monthly total for a small stack | $13 — a $7 Starter web service plus a $6 Basic-256mb database on a free Hobby workspace |
| Traffic | 5 GB included per month on Hobby, then $0.15/GB. Disks $0.25/GB-month |
| EU status | Frankfurt region; US company |
Where it is strong
- A real free tier for prototypes — free web services spin down after about 15 minutes idle and wake on request.
- Fixed instance prices, so the bill does not track traffic.
- Preview environments, cron jobs, autoscaling and a managed key-value store in the same product.
Where it falls short
- The free database expires after 30 days, so a permanently free database is not on the table.
- Database high availability starts at the Pro-4gb plan, $55/month. On the Basic tier there is no failover.
- Workspace plans changed on 1 August 2026, so older cost comparisons no longer apply.
- Render pricing — Render (checked 2026-08-06)
- Render vs Railway vs Fly.io pricing — Hostim.dev blog, June 2026 (checked 2026-08-06)
Railway
US company · EU West regionGood developer experience, no free tier, and a bill that moves with usage. For a steady always-on service it is one of the more expensive options here once the metered lines add up.
| App | Hobby plan $5/month including $5 of credit; Pro $20/month per workspace including $20 of credit |
|---|---|
| Database | A database is just another metered service — same CPU, RAM and volume rates |
| Monthly total for a small stack | Railway publishes $20 per vCPU-month and $10 per GB of RAM per month, charged on top of the plan fee |
| Traffic | Egress $0.05/GB; volume storage $0.15/GB-month |
| EU status | EU West region available; US company |
Where it is strong
- Per-second billing scales down properly for spiky or part-time workloads.
- One of the smoothest deploy experiences in the market.
- Templates and one-click services make the first hour fast.
Where it falls short
- No free tier — only a one-time $5 trial credit.
- Everything is metered: CPU, memory, volumes and egress. Steady workloads pay full rate all month.
- The plan fee is charged before any usage, so the floor is $5 or $20 depending on tier.
- Railway pricing — Railway (checked 2026-08-06)
- Usage-based pricing: why Railway and Render bills creep up — Hostim.dev blog (checked 2026-08-06)
Neon
Database only · Databricks-ownedServerless Postgres with branching, and nothing else — Neon does not host your app, so it is half a stack. It is on this list because people searching for a cheap EU stack keep landing on it and then need somewhere to run the container.
| App | None. Neon is a database service; you still need a container platform |
|---|---|
| Database | Free plan with 100 CU-hours and 0.5 GB storage per project; Launch $0.106 per CU-hour; storage $0.35/GB-month |
| Monthly total for a small stack | Database cost plus whatever your app host charges |
| Traffic | Usage-based, no fixed monthly minimum on Launch and Scale |
| EU status | EU regions available on AWS and Azure; Databricks, a US company, announced its acquisition of Neon in May 2025 |
Where it is strong
- Database branching per pull request is genuinely useful and rare.
- Scale-to-zero means dev and staging databases cost almost nothing when nobody is working.
- The free plan is enough to build against without a card.
Where it falls short
- It is not a PaaS. You still pay someone else to run the app.
- CU-hour pricing is hard to translate into a monthly figure before you have traffic data.
- Runs on AWS and Azure and is owned by a US company, so EU jurisdiction concerns apply twice over.
- Neon pricing — Neon (checked 2026-08-06)
- Databricks agrees to acquire Neon — Databricks, May 2025 (checked 2026-08-06)
Koyeb
French company · Frankfurt regionEuropean ownership and scale-to-zero, at the highest entry price in this list. It makes sense when you run many services on one plan, not when you run one.
| App | Pro plan $29/month including $10 of compute; compute billed per second on top |
|---|---|
| Database | Serverless Postgres free for 5 hours a month; the smallest always-on instance is $29.76/month plus $0.50/GB storage |
| Monthly total for a small stack | From $29, and about $59 with an always-on database |
| Traffic | 1 TB included, then $0.02/GB in the EU and US |
| EU status | French company with a Frankfurt region |
Where it is strong
- Scale-to-zero on both compute and the database.
- 1 TB of included bandwidth is the most generous allowance in this list.
- European ownership with a genuine EU region.
Where it falls short
- The $29 plan fee makes this the most expensive starting point here for a single small app.
- An always-on database roughly doubles that floor.
- The company is shifting toward GPU and AI infrastructure after announcing it is joining Mistral AI.
- Koyeb pricing — Koyeb (checked 2026-08-06)
How this list was made
Each total assumes one app that runs 24/7 with about 1 GB of RAM, and one small PostgreSQL database with light traffic. Prices come from each vendor’s published price list on the date shown next to the source link, in the vendor’s own currency. Where a vendor meters usage, the figure is their published rate applied to a service that runs all month.
Two things are deliberately not priced here: your time, and traffic spikes. Self-hosting looks cheapest per app and costs the most hours. Metered platforms look cheap at rest and move with your traffic. Both are real costs that a table cannot show.
Related lists: 7 European alternatives to Railway and Best EU Docker hosting platforms.
Frequently asked questions
What is the cheapest EU PaaS for an app plus a database?
Hostim, at €2.50 per month: €2.50 for a 1 vCPU / 1 GB app container and €0 for a 256 MB managed PostgreSQL, because that database tier is permanently free rather than a trial. Self-managing Docker on a Hetzner CX23 costs €5.99 per month but runs unlimited apps on the box, so it wins once you host several projects. Render puts an always-on app plus a small database at $13 per month — a $7 Starter service and a $6 Basic-256mb database — and Koyeb starts at $29 per month before compute.
Is Neon a PaaS?
No. Neon is serverless PostgreSQL only — it does not run your application code. If you deploy on Neon you still need a container platform next to it, so compare the total of both. Neon runs on AWS and Azure regions, including European ones, and Databricks announced its acquisition of Neon in May 2025, so the infrastructure and the owner are both US-based.
Is a free database tier really free, or is it a trial?
It varies, and this is where cheap stacks stop being cheap. Hostim database free tiers are permanent — PostgreSQL 256 MB, MySQL 256 MB, Redis 128 MB and a 1 GB volume, with no cap on how many you create. Neon has a permanent free plan of 100 CU-hours and 0.5 GB per project. Render’s free Postgres is capped at 30 days. Railway has no free tier at all, only a one-time $5 credit, and Heroku removed its free plans in November 2022.
Does self-hosting on a VPS beat a PaaS on price?
It depends on how many apps you run. A Hetzner CX23 with Docker costs €5.99 per month for as many containers as it fits, so it beats a per-app platform from roughly the third app onward. For a single app it is more expensive than a €2.50 plan and you also take on TLS renewal, patching, backups and failover. Bare metal is cheaper per app, not cheaper per month — a Hetzner AX42-1 at €97.30 per month needs about 16 small workloads before it breaks even.
Which of these keeps data under EU jurisdiction, not just in an EU region?
Hostim (German company, German bare metal), Hetzner (German company), and Koyeb (French company) are European-owned. Render, Fly.io, Railway and Neon offer European regions but are US companies, and Neon additionally runs on AWS and Azure. If your requirement is written as "no US legal reach" rather than "servers in Europe", that difference decides the shortlist.
Get Started with Hostim.dev
Deploy any Docker image, Git repo, or template instantly. Explore in a free 5-day trial project – no credit card required.