Netlify pricing explained: free plan limits, credits and paid plans
Short answer: Netlify's pricing, as of October 2026, runs on a credits system rather than separate bandwidth and build-minute limits. Free is $0 a month with 300 credits, Personal is $9 a month with 1,000 credits, Pro is $20 a month with 3,000 credits and unlimited team members, and Enterprise is a custom quote with unlimited credits. Everything draws from the same credit pool: a production deploy costs 15 credits, a GB-hour of compute costs 10 credits, a GB of bandwidth costs 20 credits, and 10,000 web requests cost 2 credits. For a small, low-traffic marketing site, the free plan is usually enough on its own.
You want to know exactly what Netlify charges before you commit a business site to it, not a rough guess.
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Netlify's plans, as published on its pricing page
You can see every plan and current credit allowance for yourself on Netlify's own pricing page, summarized here with a worked cost example.
| Plan | Price | Credits included | Team size |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0/month | 300 credits | Individual |
| Personal | $9/month | 1,000 credits | Individual |
| Pro | $20/month | 3,000 credits | Unlimited members |
| Enterprise | Custom quote | Unlimited | Unlimited members |
Every plan, including Free, includes deploying from Git, AI tools, or an API, unlimited deploy previews, custom domains with free SSL certificates, serverless functions, structured data storage through Netlify's own database product, file and image storage through Blob storage, and basic firewall rate limiting. The difference between plans is almost entirely the size of your monthly credit allowance, plus unlimited team seats starting on Pro.
How usage is actually counted
This is the part that trips people up coming from Netlify's older pricing model, which used to track bandwidth and build minutes as separate, named limits. As of October 2026, nearly everything you do on Netlify draws from one shared pool of credits, at these published rates.
- A production deploy: 15 credits, about $0.10 each.
- Compute: 10 credits per GB-hour, about $0.07.
- Bandwidth: 20 credits per GB served, about $0.13.
- Web requests: 2 credits per 10,000 requests, about $0.01.
- AI inference: billed separately from the core credit rates above, and the cost varies depending on which AI model you're using through Netlify's AI Gateway or Agent Runners.
If you run out of your plan's included credits before the month resets, you're not simply cut off. You can buy a top-up pack: 500 credits for $5 on Personal, or 1,500 credits for $10 on Pro. This is a meaningfully different experience from a hard bandwidth cap: your site keeps running, and you pay for the overage in a predictable, published rate rather than negotiating an emergency plan upgrade.
What this costs for three real site sizes
Here's a rough worked example for three common small business cases, using Netlify's published credit rates. Treat these as illustrative, not a quote, since your actual deploy frequency and traffic will vary.
A small marketing or portfolio site
Say you deploy a handful of times a month, serve a few GB of bandwidth, and get a modest trickle of traffic. A dozen deploys (12 x 15 = 180 credits) plus a few GB of bandwidth (say 5GB x 20 = 100 credits) lands comfortably under 300 credits a month. The free plan covers this.
A growing small business site with a developer making regular changes
More frequent deploys (say 30 a month, 30 x 15 = 450 credits) plus more bandwidth as traffic grows (say 15GB x 20 = 300 credits) plus some serverless function compute starts to add up past 300 credits a month, but comfortably fits inside Personal's 1,000 credits at $9 a month, or Pro's 3,000 at $20 if you also want more than one team member working on the site.
A busier site with a small team and regular AI-assisted edits
Once you add a second or third team member each pushing changes, plus regular use of Agent Runners for quick AI-assisted edits (billed separately on top of the base credit rates), Pro at $20 a month with 3,000 included credits and unlimited team seats is the realistic starting point, with the understanding that AI inference usage is the one line item that can push you to a top-up pack if you use it heavily.
What Free doesn't cover
The free plan is genuinely usable for a small site, but a few things push you toward a paid plan specifically: needing more than one team member collaborating (Pro and above include unlimited members; Free and Personal are individual plans), or simply using enough deploys, bandwidth, or compute that 300 monthly credits runs out before the month resets. There's no feature specifically locked behind a paid tier for a basic marketing site. It's almost entirely a volume question.
When a cheaper or free alternative is genuinely enough instead
If your site is a truly simple static page with very low traffic and you don't need deploy previews, team collaboration, or serverless functions, a free host like GitHub Pages or Cloudflare Pages can get you online at zero cost, covered in my Netlify vs Cloudflare Pages vs GitHub Pages comparison. The honest tradeoff is that you give up Netlify's deploy previews, its database and blob storage, and the Agent Runners workflow, which for a business site that changes regularly is usually worth paying for.
How to check your own usage before you commit
Before committing a business site to any plan, deploy it on Free first and watch your actual credit usage for a few weeks through Netlify's usage dashboard. This tells you your real deploy frequency and bandwidth pattern far more accurately than estimating from traffic numbers alone, and it's the fastest way to know whether Personal or Pro actually makes sense for your specific site rather than guessing. Netlify's pricing page also includes its own usage calculator if you want a second estimate before you deploy anything.
If you're just getting a site live for the first time, my step-by-step Netlify deploy guide walks through the actual process, and my guide to Netlify's free tier covers exactly where it stops if cost is your main concern right now. You can also start on the free plan directly and watch your own usage before committing to anything paid.
The AI inference line item is the real wildcard
Every other credit cost on Netlify follows a fixed, published rate: 15 credits a deploy, 20 credits a GB of bandwidth, and so on. AI inference through Netlify's AI Gateway or Agent Runners is the one exception, since its cost depends on which AI model you pick for a given task, and different models carry genuinely different rates. If you plan to lean on Agent Runners regularly for edits rather than occasionally, budget for this specifically rather than assuming it behaves like the rest of the credit system. Picking a lighter, cheaper model for routine small edits and reserving a more capable model for genuinely hard problems is the most direct way to keep this line item predictable.
When the Enterprise conversation is actually worth having
Enterprise is a custom quote with unlimited credits, and it's easy to assume a growing team should pre-empt their way onto it. In practice, Pro's 3,000 credits and unlimited team members cover the large majority of small and mid-size teams comfortably. The conversation becomes worth having once your usage is genuinely volatile month to month in a way that makes a top-up pack impractical, or once you need contractual uptime guarantees, single sign-on, or audit logging for compliance reasons, not simply because your team has grown past a handful of people.
Questions people ask
What is the cheapest paid Netlify plan?
Personal, at $9 a month, including 1,000 credits. It's built for a single person rather than a team; Pro at $20 a month adds unlimited team members.
Does Netlify charge for SSL certificates?
No. Free SSL on custom domains is included on every plan, including the free one.
What happens if my site goes viral and uses way more bandwidth than usual?
Your credits draw down faster than usual, and once your included allowance runs out, you'd need to buy a top-up pack or upgrade plans. Your site doesn't go offline automatically the moment credits hit zero, but check Netlify's current overage handling in your dashboard since this is the kind of detail that can change.
Is Netlify cheaper than Vercel?
At the entry paid tier, they're priced similarly, both around $20 a month for their main paid plan, though the two measure usage differently. My Netlify vs Vercel comparison goes through the real differences in what that $20 actually buys on each.
Do I need a paid plan to use a custom domain?
No. Custom domains with free SSL are included on Netlify's free plan.
How many credits does a typical small business site use per month?
It depends heavily on deploy frequency and traffic, but a low-traffic marketing site with a handful of monthly deploys typically stays well under the free plan's 300 credits. Watch your actual usage in Netlify's dashboard for a few weeks to know your real number.
Roughly what does it cost to get a site built, not just hosted?
As a broad reference, fixes and finishes start at around $1,500, and new builds start higher, always a fixed price agreed in writing before I start, never an hourly rate.