TL;DR. Yes. Hosting, a database, file storage (1GB), auth, a custom subdomain, and HTTPS are free forever, with no credit counter and no trial window — and commercial use is fine. You pay $12/month (Pro) only if you want to publish to the open web on a custom domain, or $39/month per project for App tier if a specific project needs heavier resource limits. Hatchable doesn't include AI — you bring your own (Claude, Cursor, ChatGPT, Codex) — which is why the hosting half can stay free.
The honest answer
Hatchable is free the same way Dropbox's personal tier is free — a specific set of capabilities, with no monthly credit budget, no daily usage timer, no "after 30 days you pay." You sign up, you build, you keep building for years if you want, without ever getting a bill.
The common skepticism is fair: most "free forever" claims on the internet don't hold up. They usually turn into trial windows, credit caps, or forced upgrades. So here's what's actually free, what isn't, and why the business model works.
What's free, specifically
- Hosting. Unlimited projects. Static files and server-side code, served from a CDN-backed URL. Use it for hobby projects, internal team tools, client work, or a commercial app — the plan is called Personal, but the features don't police what you're building.
- A Postgres database per project. Your own schema, your own tables. Standard row and storage caps; plenty for most real apps.
- File storage, up to 1GB per project. Image uploads, attachments, generated assets — whatever your app needs.
- Auth. Email-based auth, session management, and per-route permissions. You flip it on when you need it.
- Custom subdomain. Every project gets
{slug}.hatchable.sitefor free. HTTPS included. - Collaborators. Invite specific people (family, team, small group) to your project at no charge.
- Exports. Your code and your database are yours. Export at any time to any format. No export fee.
These never cost money, ever. There's no monthly credit refresh, no "after the free tier" cliff, no "first year free" asterisk. It's just free.
What's not free
Two paid triggers, both optional:
- $12/month Pro. Unlocks publishing your app to the open web — a custom domain (
yourdomain.com), a public URL, indexed by search engines. Apps accessible only to you and invited collaborators stay free. Pro is for when you want strangers to find your thing. - $39/month per project for App tier. A per-project upgrade for projects that outgrow the default resource limits — more users, more database rows, higher throughput. If your app fits comfortably in the default caps (most do), you never hit this. If it grows beyond them, only that specific project moves to App tier; unrelated projects under the same account stay free.
If neither of those applies — you're building privately for yourself, your family, your team, a client, or even running a commercial tool that fits within standard caps — you never pay. The two triggers are "publishing publicly on a custom domain" and "outgrowing the default per-project resources." Commercial use by itself isn't a trigger.
The one catch most visitors miss
Hatchable doesn't include AI. You need an AI tool to actually build anything — Claude Code, Cursor, ChatGPT, Codex, Antigravity, or anything else that speaks the Model Context Protocol. Hatchable is the hosting and the tooling that lets your AI deploy; it's not the AI itself.
This surprises some people who expected an all-in-one platform. The upside: most AI tools have free tiers that work fine for building Hatchable apps. Claude has a free tier; ChatGPT has a free tier; Cursor has a free tier. If you already pay for one of them, Hatchable adds zero extra subscription cost.
The downside: if you don't have an AI tool set up, there's a brief setup step (installing Claude Code, or pointing Cursor at Hatchable's MCP server) before you can build. A platform like Lovable or Bolt.new hides that step by bundling AI into their pricing. The tradeoff is their pricing bundles AI metering — which is why their free tiers run out of credits, and Hatchable's doesn't.
Why can Hatchable afford to be free?
The core reason: hosting static files, a small Postgres database, and 1GB of file storage genuinely costs pennies per user per month. The expensive part of most AI builder platforms isn't the hosting — it's the AI inference they provide. By not providing AI, we don't pay for it, so we don't have to charge for it.
Our revenue comes from three places:
- Pro upgrades ($12/mo). Users who want to publish publicly or attach custom domains.
- App tier ($39/mo per project). Projects that outgrow default per-project resource limits.
- That's it. No ads, no data sales, no affiliate deals, no rug-pull waiting to happen.
This is a common freemium model: the paid tiers subsidize the free tier, because free users mostly cost pennies to host and a small fraction of them eventually upgrade. It's not sleight of hand; it's the same shape that makes Dropbox, GitHub, and countless other "free forever" platforms work.
What if Hatchable raises prices or kills the free tier?
The honest answer: if we ever do that, you can export your code and database and move to any other host with standard Node + Postgres support. Your app is your app — we don't lock you in. That's not a promise we made up for marketing; it's a constraint that comes from Hatchable using standard web primitives (not a proprietary runtime or data format).
We don't plan to kill the free tier. But "we don't plan to" is a weaker promise than "you can leave whenever." The latter is the real protection, and it's the real reason to trust any free offering — from us or anyone else. Our code and data portability is deliberate; it's the one commitment we can make that doesn't depend on us keeping our word.
What's the realistic user experience?
Concretely: you visit hatchable.com, click Copy on one of the setup-command buttons (it mints you a free anonymous token), paste the command into Claude Code or Cursor, and describe an app. The AI calls Hatchable's APIs to create the project, write code, run migrations, and deploy. You get a live URL in a few minutes.
You can use Hatchable for six months, a year, five years — making hundreds of projects, tearing most of them down, keeping a couple around — without paying anything. The only time a bill shows up is if you decide to open one of those projects to the public with a custom domain, or if you start charging users for it.
That's the whole thing. It's free. It's genuinely free, not trial-free or credit-free or lite-tier free. The caveat is that you bring the AI, but the AI is usually free too.
Try it in under a minute.
Click Copy on the homepage, paste into your AI tool, describe your app. Free forever.
Get started free →Frequently asked questions
Do I need a credit card to sign up?
No. You don't even need to sign up — click Copy on the homepage and Hatchable mints you an anonymous token that works immediately. You only create a full account when you want to claim the projects you've built so you can log in and manage them later.
Is the free tier going to go away?
We don't plan to. But the real protection for you isn't our promise — it's export: your code and database are standard and portable, so you can take them elsewhere if anything about the free tier ever changes. That's true by design, not as a marketing promise.
What AI tools work with Hatchable?
Any MCP-compatible AI tool — Claude Code, Cursor, ChatGPT's desktop app, OpenAI Codex, Google's Antigravity, OpenClaw, and others. Most have free tiers that work fine for building Hatchable apps. See our Claude Code guide, Cursor guide, or Codex guide for the exact setup.
Can I use the free plan for a commercial project?
Yes. The Personal plan is free and works fine for commercial use — there's no rule against charging your users, selling a product, or running a business tool on it. The only reasons to upgrade are (1) you want to publish the project publicly on your own domain (that's Pro, $12/mo) or (2) your project grows past the default per-project resource caps (that's App tier, $39/mo per project). Plenty of small commercial apps sit comfortably on the free plan forever.
What counts as "outgrowing the default caps"?
The per-project caps cover most real apps: a reasonable number of users, database rows, storage, and bandwidth. You won't hit them on a hobby project, an internal team tool, or a small commercial app. You would if you're running something with thousands of active users, millions of rows, or heavy traffic. When a specific project bumps up against the caps, it moves to App tier ($39/mo for that project); your other projects stay on the free plan.
Can I use Hatchable for a client project?
Yes. Build it, hand it off. If the end client runs it on their own Hatchable account, they get the same free plan treatment as anyone. If the project grows past the per-project caps, it moves to App tier, paid by whoever owns the account. Either way, you don't pay for hosting the client's work — the account that owns the deployed project does.
Is there a file size limit or request rate limit?
Soft limits, designed to be high enough that personal apps don't hit them. 1GB file storage per project, reasonable bandwidth (enough for typical personal/team traffic), and standard HTTP rate limits to prevent abuse. If a personal project somehow exceeds these, we'll reach out before throttling — we don't want to surprise anyone.