Can I use Netlify or Cloudflare Pages Free for a commercial site?
Short answer, from the pages we read on 2026-10-17: we found no clause on either provider's public pages that bars a commercial site from the Free plan, but the document that governs the hosting service itself could not be read for Netlify, so that answer stays UNKNOWN. That is different from Vercel, whose Hobby plan says in writing that commercial use needs Pro [1]. This page shows exactly what we searched, what we found, and the real limits that decide whether Free is enough.
What we searched, and what came back
We fetched each page below, stripped the markup, and searched the text for "commercial" and "personal use". PASS would need an explicit permission; absence of a ban is reported as UNKNOWN, not as permission.
| Provider and document | Verdict | What the text says | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cloudflare Pages limits page | UNKNOWN | Lists limits only (builds, files, domains). No restriction on commercial use appears. | [2] |
| Cloudflare Self-Serve Subscription Agreement (last updated September 12, 2025) | UNKNOWN | "Commercial" appears twice: in the US federal procurement clause ("commercial computer software") and in the arbitration rules ("Commercial Arbitration Rules"). Neither limits what you host. | [3] |
| Cloudflare service-specific terms | UNKNOWN | Says the CDN may be limited if you serve "a disproportionate percentage of pictures, audio files, or other large files" without a paid service. Pages may be covered by other terms we did not read. | [4] |
| Netlify pricing page | UNKNOWN | Free is "always free, with hard monthly limits that cannot be exceeded or incur any costs". No commercial rule on the page. | [5] |
| Netlify Acceptable Use Policy (last updated March 8th, 2023) | UNKNOWN | Says users "must not modify, create derivative works based on or in any manner commercially exploit the Netlify Services". That is about reselling Netlify itself, not about the site you host on it. | [6] |
| Netlify website terms of use (last updated October 14, 2026) | UNKNOWN | Covers use of netlify.com. The word "commercial" does not appear. | [7] |
| Netlify terms for the hosting service | UNKNOWN | We tried /legal/terms-of-service, /legal/master-terms, /terms-of-service, /legal/customer-terms and /legal/service-agreement on netlify.com: each returned HTTP 404. We could not find the governing document from public links. | [8] |
What this does and does not show: it shows we found no written prohibition on the pages above. It does not show permission. If your site takes payment or runs ads, read the provider's current terms for your account before you rely on Free, or ask support.
The limits that usually decide it
For most small commercial sites the practical question is not a clause but a cap. These are the figures as read today.
- Cloudflare Pages Free: 1 build at a time, 100 custom domains per project, builds time out after 20 minutes, 25 MiB maximum per asset, and the limits page lists 500 builds a month on Free [2]. Larger files are meant for R2 or a custom domain [2].
- Netlify Free: $0 a month with 300 credits a month and a hard limit; Personal is $9 a month with 1,000 credits; Pro starts at $20 a month with 3,000 credits [9]. A production deploy costs 15 credits, bandwidth costs 20 credits per GB, and form submissions are listed as free [9].
Our arithmetic from those Netlify figures: 300 credits is at most 20 production deploys with no traffic, or about 15 GB of bandwidth with no deploys. A site that deploys 10 times a month (150 credits) has 150 credits left, about 7.5 GB of bandwidth. Because the Free limit is hard, running out means the allowance stops rather than a bill arriving; check the pricing page for what stops. Credits also cover functions compute at 10 credits per GB-hour [9], which we did not price.
Which one fits which site
- Static brochure or docs site, a few deploys a month, light traffic: both fit the limits; Cloudflare Pages has no credit meter on the page we read.
- Site with frequent deploys (daily or per pull request): Netlify Free runs out of credits first. Cloudflare's build cap is 500 builds a month.
- Site with large downloads or video: Cloudflare's CDN terms warn about large files; Netlify charges 20 credits per GB. Put big files in object storage.
- Site that takes payment or runs ads and cannot risk a terms dispute: price the paid plan as a candidate (Netlify Personal $9 [9], Vercel Pro $20 [1]; we did not read Cloudflare's paid plan prices) next to the free options. Compared with a surprise migration, it is cheap.
The same checking, applied to a different decision, is on our Vercel Hobby page. The free replacement scorecard turns your must-haves into pass or fail tests, and the CI sample brief shows the full method with a source on every cell. If you would rather have your own tool compared against your list, the Switch Brief is $39 and delivered within 24 hours. It is AI-written research from public pages, not legal advice.
Limits of this page
This is a reading of public pages on one day. It is not legal advice and not a ruling on your site. We did not deploy anything, and we cannot see your account terms or traffic. Providers change terms (Netlify's website terms changed three days before we read them), so check the dates and the source links.
Sources (fetched 2026-10-17 unless noted)
- https://vercel.com/docs/limits/fair-use-guidelines (read 2026-10-16)
- https://developers.cloudflare.com/pages/platform/limits/
- https://www.cloudflare.com/terms/
- https://www.cloudflare.com/service-specific-terms-application-services/
- https://www.netlify.com/pricing/
- https://www.netlify.com/legal/acceptable-use-policy/
- https://www.netlify.com/legal/terms-of-use/
- Netlify hosting terms: five guessed URLs on netlify.com, all HTTP 404 (listed above)
- https://docs.netlify.com/manage/accounts-and-billing/billing/billing-for-credit-based-plans/credit-based-pricing-plans/