# Render 44 Hacker News commenters recommended Render and 19 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 8 of 13 months; owners who said how long report a median of 1 years (3 owners). It meets the Hacker Approved badge rule. **Verdict:** People recommend Render for simple, predictable deploys and reliable hosting, especially as a modern Heroku alternative. Common caveat: plan prices and bandwidth costs have risen for some teams. ## Why people recommend it - Reliable and works well over years (6 comments): "render has been a pleasure, just works, and auto deploys per branch also available" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47829962)) "I moved to render years ago and have been very happy with the decision." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46914226)) "I've been using Render for close to 5 years, and it's excellent." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46922578)) - Good modern alternative to Heroku (6 comments): "For actual server paas that can run docker containers, render.com and fly.io are what heroku could have evolved to." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45898620)) "Fly, Render, and even Heroku still are all better choices then working with Railway I think" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48211539)) "I've used Render as a good modern day alternative and have been pretty happy with it." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46915675)) - Good for front-end apps and static sites (4 comments): "Render with their own CDN is quite good for frontend apps." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46915702)) "Render for front-end apps. That's my current go-to." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46914398)) "Railway/Render can easily host Next.js applications" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46967757)) - Simple, predictable billing and deploys (2 comments): "I myself prefer render.com, for the simplicity and predictability of their billing, and their deployment model is so intuitive" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46918931)) "render feels like the most natural next step right now (similar mental model)" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46914249)) ## What people warn about - Costs rose for plans and bandwidth (5 comments): "Render increased their prices (which for my team worked out at a doubling of costs) with a one month notice period" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46923954)) "Being forced to the Pro plan from our prior Organization plan is increasing our bill by 40%." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47883070)) "Bandwidth limits on Pro are insanely low, and extra bandwidth is still insanely expensive." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47883152)) - Requires Dockerfiles for some languages (2 comments): "Railway and Render work but still require you to write Dockerfiles and understand container configuration." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47197461)) "Render drops to Docker for Java, Kotlin, .NET, and PHP." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47209452)) - Cannot run a single instance (2 comments): "Render does not allow you to spin up 1 instance of an app." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48087021)) "it did not allow me to spin up 1 instance of my web app" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48087013)) - Slow startup on free plan (2 comments): "then there's going to be a 3 minute load time for a landing page to become visible" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47828469)) "the problem is it is in free plan so it needs time to activate" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47751468)) ## Alternatives hackers recommend - [Railway](https://hackerapproved.com/p/railway.md): 94 recommend - [Heroku](https://hackerapproved.com/p/heroku.md): 82 recommend - [Fly.io](https://hackerapproved.com/p/fly-io.md): 72 recommend - [Google App Engine](https://hackerapproved.com/p/google-app-engine.md): 11 recommend - [DigitalOcean App Platform](https://hackerapproved.com/p/digitalocean-app-platform.md): 11 recommend ## Where to get it - [Visit the official site](https://render.com/) ## Cite as Hacker Approved, "Render", https://hackerapproved.com/p/render/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).