If a recruiter opens your demo on a free tier like Render‘s after it has been idle for 15 minutes, the page may stay blank for close to a minute while the service starts up again. Someone working through a pile of applications may not give it that long, and a project that seems broken on the first click is hard to explain afterward.
Many developers put a short note beside the link for that reason, saying the backend may take 30 seconds to wake on the first visit. The app loads no faster with it, but the person clicking knows the pause is expected, so a slow first load looks like a sleeping server and not a fault in your work.
Besides that wait, the thing to check before you choose where your Node.js project runs is what you pay once the credit, trial or introductory price runs out. On two of the paid plans below, the monthly renewal price is roughly four times the introductory one.
| Host | Free, credit or paid | When idle | Cost after the free part |
|---|---|---|---|
| Heroku | Student credit, $13 a month for 24 months | Eco sleeps after 30 minutes, Basic stays on | About $10 to $12 a month at list price |
| Hosting.com | Paid from day one | Not stated | Not published |
| DigitalOcean | Paid, student credit ended | Droplet stays on | $4 a month Droplet, flat |
| Hostinger | Intro price on a 48-month prepay | Stays on | $16.99 a month at renewal |
| GreenGeeks | Intro price on a 12-month prepay | Not published | $18.95 a month at renewal |
| Render | Free, 750 hours a month | Sleeps after 15 minutes | Free database deleted after 30 days |
| Vercel | Free Hobby plan, non-commercial | Runs per request | $20 per seat a month on Pro |
| Railway | $5 trial credit for 30 days | Runs while credit lasts | $5 a month Hobby |
Student Credits Still Open in 2026
If you counted on the DigitalOcean credit that came with the GitHub Student Developer Pack, it is no longer there. DigitalOcean left the Pack. The last redemptions closed on July 31, 2026, and every DigitalOcean credit from it, including ones students had already redeemed, expired on August 1.
The Pack still lists Heroku‘s student credit and $100 of Microsoft Azure credit, along with a few free first-year domains. Render, Railway, and Vercel are not part of it. Whatever you sign up for, write down the date the credit ends, because a project that stops running without warning months from now can leave a dead link on a resume you have already sent out.
1. Heroku
Heroku has no free tier, but students verified through the GitHub Student Developer Pack receive $13 a month in platform credit for 24 months, which comes to $312. That credit is enough to run an Eco dyno plus the Essential-0 Postgres database for $10 a month, or an always-on Basic dyno with the same database for $12, and either setup fits inside the credit for the full two years. You will need to be 18 or older and keep a card on file, and anyone who has joined the program since October 2022 cannot apply again.
After the 24 months, you either spin your resources down or start paying list price. The Eco dyno also sleeps after 30 minutes without traffic, so the Basic option is the one that keeps a recruiter from waiting. If you plan to stay on Heroku after school, keep in mind that it moved to a sustaining engineering model in February 2026.
2. Hosting.com
Hosting.com has no free tier or student offer. For what you pay from the first day, you get one account for both your Node app and your portfolio site. You can deploy from Git or over SSH and pick from several Node versions; MySQL and PostgreSQL are both available, and the Starter plan hosts five websites. Annual plans include a free domain for the first year, and there is a 30-day money-back guarantee.
3. DigitalOcean
For several years, DigitalOcean was the student default, largely because of its $200 Pack credit. That credit has ended. App Platform, its managed route, has no free option for a running server.
The cheaper route is the $4 a month Droplet, a small server with 512 MiB of memory that never sleeps. Setting up Nginx, PM2, and SSH on it yourself teaches you real server work, and that experience can become part of your portfolio. The price stays flat, so there is no renewal jump to plan for.
4. Hostinger
Hostinger runs Node.js apps on a shared plan that does not sleep and comes with a domain and email free for the first year. You can connect a GitHub repository, including a private one, or upload a ZIP, and it supports Express and Next.js along with several other frameworks.
The introductory price is $3.99 a month, but only on a 48-month term, which means paying $191.52 upfront. When the term ends, the plan renews at $16.99 a month, and the free year of domain and email will have ended long before then.
5. GreenGeeks
Node.js starts on the Pro plan at GreenGeeks, which costs $4.95 a month prepaid for 12 months and renews at $18.95 a month. The cheaper Lite plan hosts a single website and leaves Node.js out. Because Pro allows unlimited websites, GreenGeeks Node.js hosting can keep a portfolio site and its Node app on one account.
GreenGeeks does not publish whether an idle app sleeps. Its 30-day money-back guarantee gives you time to open your demo after it has sat idle and see how fast it loads.
6. Render
Render gives you a real long-running Node process for free, deployed straight from a GitHub repository. The free allowance is 750 instance hours a month, enough for one service running around the clock.
After 15 minutes without traffic, the free service spins down and needs about a minute to start again. If that wait worries you, a scheduled ping can keep one service awake. The free Postgres database has a harder limit, and it is deleted 30 days after you create it.
7. Vercel
Vercel builds a preview deployment every time you commit new code, so you can share a link to each version of your project as it changes. An Express app deploys with no configuration as a single function, and static files go in a public folder.
The Hobby plan is free for personal, non-commercial use. If you go past a usage limit, you usually have to wait 30 days, unless you move to the Pro plan at $20 per seat each month. Because the app is deployed as a function, long-lived WebSocket servers and background workers are not a good fit.
8. Railway
Railway lets you start with a $5 trial credit that lasts 30 days and needs no card, which makes it easy to try on a weekend. After the trial, the Free plan gives you $1 of usage a month. That is too little to keep a Node service and a database running, so an app that has to stay up belongs on the $5 Hobby plan, where the fee includes $5 of usage.
Should Your Portfolio Link Be Free or Paid?
The trade comes down to who will click the link and when. A free tier costs nothing, but it may be asleep when that person arrives. An always-on paid plan loads right away and brings a renewal date you will need to plan around.
If you are sending out applications this month, a link that opens without a wait is worth a few dollars. If the project is a class submission that will be graded and then set aside, a free tier with a clear note beside the link is a reasonable place to start, and you can move it to a paid plan later if the project grows into something you want to keep showing.