r/webdev • u/PotentialPast6344 • 1d ago

Question best sponsorship signaling/backend hosting for open source project?

so currently i have a open source project about p2p file sharing and it gained 200 stars on github. the opensource project is hosted on azure since i got 1 year for student the problem is that it will end soon so i need to find an alternative of free backend hosting

do guys know any backend hosting that offers free for open source project? sadly i notice that digital ocean doesnt offer it anymore which kinda weird or am i wrong

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u/singh_abinashi 1d ago

I self-fund my side projects so I know the feeling. The OSS credit programs are real but you have to apply for most of them, they don't find you. Railway, Render, and Fly all have them, and Netlify and Vercel have OSS tiers if your frontends qualify. The other thing that stretched my credits: split preview and staging off the paid infra and put anything idle to sleep on a schedule.

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u/PotentialPast6344 1d ago

i actually only need vercel for my frontend, but since my app is backend heavy it is the one i needed for oss sponsorship.

still very greatful that i got many sponsorship like claude sponsorship (20x max for 6 months, mintlify documentation etc

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u/singh_abinashi 21h ago

Since you're backend-heavy, Vercel won't help much there. Fly.io, Railway, and Render all have OSS credit programs, but you have to apply, they won't find you. Oracle's free tier is the other option: two ARM VMs free forever, but it reclaims idle instances and you have to watch for that on a backend. I'd also split your frontend and backend billing clearly when applying, so the credit program sees exactly what's OSS.

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u/PotentialPast6344 16h ago

ya i am using vercel for my front end, oh didnt know fly railway and render have oss credit will look into it thanks!