Cheap, always-on hosting for AI builders shipping real apps. Any stack. No cold starts. No nonsense.
You built something cool with AI. You share the link. They click it. And… it's loading. For 30 seconds. Because your "free" host put your app to sleep.
Free tiers on Render and Railway spin down after 15 minutes. Your portfolio, your side project, your demo for a potential client—all asleep when it matters most.
Heroku wants $7/dyno. Railway charges by compute. Ship 5 apps and suddenly you're paying $50+/month for glorified side projects.
Vercel and Netlify are great—if you only build with Next.js. Want Rails? Flask? A plain Node server? Good luck with their serverless abstractions.
No YAML files. No build configs. No 47-step onboarding wizard.
Link your repository. Set your start command and env vars — done in minutes.
Every git push triggers a deploy. That's it.
Your app is live, always on, with SSL and a custom domain ready to go.
No tiers, no per-seat charges, no compute-based billing you need a spreadsheet to understand.
Flat rate. Ship ten apps for $50. Ship one for $5.
We're not trying to be everything. We're trying to be the obvious choice for hosting the apps you actually build.
| Slipway | Render | Railway | Heroku | Vercel | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Price per app | $5/mo | $7/mo | ~$5+ usage | $7/mo | $20/mo* |
| Always on | Yes | No (free sleeps) | No (free sleeps) | Yes (paid) | Serverless |
| Real backend support | Any stack | Yes | Yes | Yes | Next.js focus |
| Database included | Postgres | Free 90 days | Usage-based | $5+ add-on | $20+ add-on |
| Simple pricing | Flat rate | Tiered | Usage-based | Tiered | Per-seat + usage |
| Built for many apps | Yes | Gets expensive | Gets expensive | Gets expensive | Gets expensive |
*Vercel Pro plan required for commercial use. Prices as of early 2026.
Create an account, connect your repo, and ship. Early access — $5/app/month.
Questions? Email hello@slipway.cloud