Free WordPress hosting sounds like the perfect deal. You get a website, you pay nothing, and you can start today. I get the appeal. When I started building websites back in 2010, I was watching every dollar too.
Here is the honest truth though. In 2026, “free WordPress hosting” can mean 5 very different things. It can mean a hosted platform that shows its own ads on your site. It can mean a free shared host with daily hit caps. It can mean a cloud server that is free only if you set it up and manage it yourself. It can also mean WordPress running on your own laptop or inside your browser, where nobody else can see it.
Some of these are great. Some are a trap for a business site. And the most famous free host of all, 000webhost, does not even exist anymore.
In this guide I break down what each free option really gives you, with limits pulled from each provider’s own pages as of November 2026. I also show you when free is totally fine (learning, testing, practice) and when it is time to move to a cheap paid plan. I run several WordPress sites for my own businesses, and the pattern I see over and over is simple. Free is a great classroom and a bad storefront.
If you are brand new to all of this, read my web hosting for beginners guide first. It walks you through hosting types, backups and renewal pricing in plain English.
Quick disclosure: some links on Web Hosting Paradise may become affiliate links later. You can read the full affiliate disclosure for details. Everything here is research-based, and I never claim hands-on testing I did not do.
What Free WordPress Hosting Actually Means in 2026
Before you sign up for anything, it helps to know which kind of “free” you are looking at. They all solve different problems.
WordPress.com vs WordPress.org (the confusion that trips everyone up)
WordPress.org is the free, open source software. You download it and install it on any server that meets the requirements. WordPress.com is a hosted service run by Automattic that uses the same core software but controls what you can install on each plan.
That difference matters a lot for free plans. On a self-hosted WordPress.org site, you can install any plugin or theme you want. On the WordPress.com Free plan, you cannot install plugins at all. More on that below.
The 5 types of free WordPress hosting
- Hosted free plans: WordPress.com Free runs the site for you, with limits on storage, plugins and branding.
- Free shared hosting: providers like InfinityFree and AwardSpace give you a small slice of a shared server where you can install WordPress.org yourself.
- Cloud free tiers: Google Cloud and Oracle Cloud offer always-free virtual machines. You install and manage the whole server stack yourself.
- Local development: apps like LocalWP run WordPress on your own computer for building and testing.
- Browser sandboxes: WordPress Playground runs a full WordPress site inside a browser tab with no server at all.
Only the first 3 can put a site on the public internet. The last 2 are for practice, building and testing. That is not a weakness. It is exactly what they are designed for.
Free WordPress Hosting Options Compared
Here is the side-by-side view. Every limit in this table comes from the provider’s own pricing page, docs or official knowledge base as of November 2026. Limits change, so always confirm on the provider’s page before you commit.
| Option | Type | Key limits | Custom domain | Plugins | Ads on your site | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| WordPress.com Free | Hosted platform | 1 GB | wordpress.com subdomain only | No | WordPress.com ads shown | Personal blogs, learning the editor |
| InfinityFree | Free shared hosting | 5 GB, 50,000 hits per day | Yes (bring your own) | Yes | No ads | Portfolios, test sites |
| AwardSpace Free | Free shared hosting | 1 GB, 5 GB bandwidth per month | 1 domain plus 3 subdomains | Yes | No ads | Small prototypes |
| Google Cloud Free Tier | Self-managed cloud VM | 1 e2-micro, 30 GB disk, 1 GB egress | Yes | Yes | No ads | Learning server admin |
| Oracle Cloud Always Free | Self-managed cloud VM | 200 GB block storage, 10 TB egress | Yes | Yes | No ads | Technical users, server labs |
| LocalWP | Local desktop app | Your own computer | Not public | Yes | No ads | Learning and building offline |
| WordPress Playground | Browser sandbox | Browser storage | Not public | Yes | No ads | Quick tests and demos |
| 000webhost | Closed | Shut down in October 2024 | N/A | N/A | N/A | Nothing, it no longer exists |
The table shows the pattern pretty clearly. Every free option saves you money by taking something away. It might be plugins, traffic, email, support, or your time.
WordPress.com Free Plan: Easy, but Locked Down
The WordPress.com Free plan is the easiest way to get a WordPress site live without paying. You sign up, pick a theme and start writing. There is no server to manage and no software to update.
What you get on the Free plan
According to the WordPress.com pricing page, the Free plan costs $0 with no expiration date and includes 1 GB of storage. Your site lives on a wordpress.com subdomain, so your address looks like yourname.wordpress.com instead of yourname.com.
That is plenty for a personal blog or a class project. A text-heavy blog can run for a long time on 1 GB if you keep your images reasonably sized.
The limits that matter
Here is where free starts to hurt. WordPress.com shows its own ads to your visitors on the Free plan, and you do not earn anything from them. You also cannot connect a custom domain.
The big one is plugins. The WordPress.com plugins support page says installing plugins is available on paid plans, and free sites need to upgrade. No plugins means no WooCommerce store, no custom SEO plugin setup, no backup plugin of your choice, and no contact form plugin beyond what is built in.
The pricing page also lists basic stats limited to the last 7 days on the Free plan. For a business that wants to track marketing, that is pretty thin.
Who the WordPress.com Free plan fits
It fits writers, students and hobbyists who want a public site with zero setup. It is also a decent way to learn the WordPress editor before you commit to anything.
If you want a business site, the cheapest paid tier is the Personal plan. WordPress.com lists it at $4 per month billed yearly or $9 billed monthly as of November 2026, and the plugins page includes Personal in the plans that can install plugins. Check the pricing page for the renewal rate before you buy, because multi-year terms are priced differently.
Free Shared Hosting: InfinityFree and AwardSpace
Free shared hosts give you a small account on a shared server. You install the normal WordPress.org software, so you get full plugin and theme freedom. The catch is the resource limits and the lack of real support.
InfinityFree
InfinityFree’s homepage lists 5 GB of disk space, unlimited bandwidth, free SSL certificates and support for your own domain. It also says it will never place ads on your site, and there is no credit card, no trial and no expiration date. The page lists PHP 8.4 and MySQL 8.0 or MariaDB 11.4, which lines up with the current WordPress requirements.
Unlimited bandwidth does not mean unlimited traffic though. InfinityFree’s own article on the hits limit says accounts are limited to 50,000 hits in a single day. A hit is any file request, so 1 page view with a stylesheet, scripts and 10 images can count as 15 or more hits. If you go over, the article says the account is taken offline for 24 hours.
The homepage also says your site needs a few hits every month to stay active. So you cannot park a site there and forget about it.
Email is another gap. The homepage does not list email accounts, and InfinityFree forum threads say mailbox accounts are no longer offered because of spam problems. If you need a business inbox, plan on a separate provider. My guide to email hosting for small business covers the options.
AwardSpace free hosting
AwardSpace’s knowledge base article on free plan limits lists 1 GB of disk space, 5 GB of bandwidth per month, about 5,000 visits per month, 1 MySQL database and 1 email account. The free hosting page says there are no ads and no forced upgrade.
The free plan supports 1 domain plus 3 free subdomains, and WordPress installs through AwardSpace’s own Zacky Installer. The free hosting page did not list SSL details for the free plan, so check that before you launch anything that collects form data.
5,000 visits a month is fine for a portfolio or a test site. It is not enough headroom for a site you plan to promote.
The hidden cost of free shared hosting
Here is what I tell anyone thinking about running a real business on free shared hosting. The limits are not the only problem. The bigger issues are the ones you do not see on the homepage.
- Support: free plans usually rely on community forums, not a ticket or chat team.
- Backups: you should assume nobody is backing up your site except you.
- Suspension risk: hitting a daily cap takes your site offline at exactly the moment traffic is good.
- Trust: a free subdomain looks temporary to customers and to anyone you email.
- Migration later: moving a grown site off a restricted host is more work than starting on the right plan.
If you do use a free shared host, set up your own backups from day 1. My guide on how to back up a WordPress site walks through the 3-2-1 approach with free tools.
What Happened to 000webhost?
For years, 000webhost was the name everyone mentioned for free WordPress hosting. It still shows up in old tutorials and YouTube videos. So let me save you the search.
000webhost is gone. Hostinger, which owned it, published an announcement on July 8, 2024 titled As the Web Hosting Market Changes, 000webhost Closes. It said 000webhost no longer accepts new users and scheduled the full shutdown for October 14, 2024. Existing users were told they could download their backups or move to a paid Hostinger plan.
If you see a guide in 2026 recommending 000webhost, it is outdated. That is also a good reminder of the biggest risk with free hosting. A free service can change its terms or shut down, and you have very little say in it.
Cloud Free Tiers: Google Cloud and Oracle Cloud
This is the option that technical people love. The big cloud providers give you a small virtual server for free, forever, within certain limits. You install Linux, a web server, PHP, a database and WordPress yourself.
I want to be really clear here. This is not beginner hosting. You are the hosting company. Security updates, firewall rules, SSL renewals, backups and fixing things at 2am are all on you.
Google Cloud free tier
Google’s free tier documentation lists 1 non-preemptible e2-micro VM instance per month in 3 US regions: us-west1 (Oregon), us-central1 (Iowa) and us-east1 (South Carolina). It includes 30 GB-months of standard persistent disk and 1 GB of outbound data transfer from North America per month, excluding China and Australia.
New accounts also get a free trial with $300 in credit to use over 90 days, according to the same page. That credit runs out, but the free tier limits continue.
The e2-micro is a small machine. It can run a lightweight WordPress site, but it will not feel fast under real traffic, and that 1 GB of egress is tight once real visitors show up. Go past the free limits and you start paying normal cloud rates, so set up a budget alert in your billing account on day 1.
Oracle Cloud Always Free
Oracle is more generous on paper. Its Always Free resources page lists up to 2 AMD micro instances with 1/8 OCPU and 1 GB of memory each, plus Ampere A1 Arm capacity equal to 2 OCPUs and 12 GB of memory for Always Free tenancies. It also includes 200 GB of block volume storage and 10 TB per month of outbound data.
There is a catch worth knowing. The same page says Oracle may reclaim idle Always Free instances if CPU, network and (on A1 shapes) memory usage all stay under 20% over a 7-day period. A quiet hobby site could look idle by that definition. Read the policy carefully before you put anything you care about there.
Who should use a cloud free tier
Use it if you already know Linux, or you want to learn server administration as a skill. It is a great sandbox for that. If you just want a business website that works, the time you spend maintaining the server is worth far more than the few dollars a month a cheap host costs.
Free Local WordPress for Learning and Testing
This is the free option I recommend most, and it is not hosting at all. If your goal is to learn WordPress, test a theme or try plugins, you do not need a public server.
LocalWP
LocalWP is a desktop app that runs WordPress on your own computer. Its site says it is free and always will be, and it runs on Mac, Windows and Linux. Spinning up a new site is 1 click, and SSL is included.
Local also has Live Links, which give you a shareable URL so a client or friend can preview a local site without you deploying it. When you are ready, you can push the site to WP Engine or Flywheel, or move it to any host with a migration plugin.
This is how I would teach anyone WordPress. Break things locally, learn how themes and plugins work, then launch on a real host once the site is ready.
WordPress Playground
WordPress Playground runs a full WordPress install inside your browser using WebAssembly. There is nothing to install. It is perfect for testing a plugin for 10 minutes, trying a block theme or showing someone how the editor works.
Just know the storage rules. The official Playground limitations page says temporary Playgrounds are discarded when the tab closes or the page refreshes. Saved Playgrounds live in browser storage, which can be wiped by private browsing or clearing site data, so the docs recommend exporting a ZIP if you want a portable backup.
Treat Playground as a scratch pad. It is not a place to keep a real site.
When Free WordPress Hosting Is Fine
I am not anti-free. Free hosting is a smart choice in the right situation. Here is when I think it makes total sense.
- Learning WordPress: LocalWP or Playground let you practice with zero risk and zero cost.
- Testing plugins and themes: try them locally before you install them on a live site.
- Class projects and personal blogs: WordPress.com Free is easy and needs no maintenance.
- Short-term demos: a free shared account can host a quick prototype for feedback.
- Learning server skills: a Google Cloud or Oracle Cloud free tier is a real-world lab.
In all of these cases, nothing bad happens if the site goes offline for a day. That is the test I use. If downtime would cost you money or credibility, free is the wrong tool.
When to Move to a Cheap Paid Plan
The moment your site becomes part of a business, free hosting starts costing you more than it saves. Here are the signs it is time to upgrade.
Signs you have outgrown free
- You want your own domain name and a professional email address.
- You need plugins, like WooCommerce, a form builder or an SEO plugin.
- You are spending money on ads or content and sending traffic to the site.
- You got close to a daily hit limit or monthly visit cap.
- You need someone to call or chat with when something breaks.
- You want automatic backups you do not have to manage yourself.
If 2 or more of those apply, move. A basic paid plan is cheap compared with the cost of a site that goes offline during a launch.
What a cheap paid plan gives you
Entry-level paid WordPress hosting usually adds a custom domain connection, real support, automated backups, staging on some plans and much higher resource limits. The trick is to compare the renewal price, not the intro price. I broke that math down in my guide to cheap WordPress hosting and the real 3-year cost.
If you want a broader view that compares staging, backups and managed features, my best WordPress hosting roundup is the next read. And if you are unsure whether you need managed hosting or regular shared hosting, read my managed WordPress vs shared hosting comparison.
Make sure any host you pick meets the official WordPress server requirements, which currently recommend PHP 8.3 or greater, MySQL 8.0 or greater or MariaDB 10.11 or greater, and HTTPS support.
How to Move From Free Hosting to a Paid Host
Moving off free hosting is very doable. The process depends on where you are starting from.
From InfinityFree, AwardSpace or a cloud server
These run normal WordPress.org, so a standard migration works. Back up your files and database, set up the new host, move the site, test it on a temporary URL, then point your domain. My step-by-step guide on how to migrate a WordPress site to a new host covers every step, including DNS and SSL.
Free hosts sometimes limit upload sizes or execution time, which can make big migration files fail. A plugin that handles large sites well helps here. I compared the options in my roundup of the best WordPress migration plugins.
From WordPress.com Free
WordPress.com Free does not let you install migration plugins, so you use the built-in export instead. The export gives you an XML file with your posts, pages and comments, which you then import on your new WordPress.org site using the WordPress importer. The importer can pull your images across from the old site if you tick the option to download file attachments, so keep the old site live until the move is finished.
Expect to rebuild your theme settings and menus by hand. It is a bit of a pain in the butt, but it is usually an afternoon of work for a small blog.
From LocalWP or Playground
Local sites move like any other WordPress site. Export the site, or use a migration plugin to push it to your new host. For Playground, export the ZIP first, then restore it on a real host with a migration or backup tool.
After the move
Once you are live on paid hosting, set up off-site backups and check your speed. My guide on how to speed up a WordPress site covers caching, images and the other quick wins that matter once real visitors arrive.
My Honest Recommendation
Here is how I would think about it if you were sitting across the table from me.
- Learning WordPress: use LocalWP. It is free, private and fast.
- Testing a plugin for 5 minutes: use WordPress Playground.
- Personal blog with zero setup: WordPress.com Free is fine. Accept the ads and the subdomain.
- Portfolio or prototype on WordPress.org: InfinityFree or AwardSpace can work. Keep your own backups.
- Learning Linux and servers: Oracle Cloud or Google Cloud free tiers make a great lab.
- Any business, store or client site: skip free and start on a cheap paid plan with real support.
The money you save on free hosting is small. The time you lose to limits, outages and a forced migration later is not. Start where your goal points, and upgrade the moment the site starts making or saving you money.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is there truly free WordPress hosting with no ads?
Yes. InfinityFree and AwardSpace both say they do not place ads on your site. The trade-off is strict resource limits and community-level support. WordPress.com Free does show WordPress.com ads to visitors.
Can I install plugins on free WordPress hosting?
It depends on the type. On WordPress.com Free you cannot install plugins. On free shared hosts and cloud free tiers you run normal WordPress.org, so you can install plugins, though the server limits may make heavy plugins slow.
Is 000webhost still available?
No. Hostinger announced in July 2024 that 000webhost stopped accepting new users, and the full shutdown was scheduled for October 14, 2024. Any guide recommending it is out of date.
Can I run a WooCommerce store on free hosting?
Technically you can install WooCommerce on a free shared host, but I would not run a real store there. Stores need reliable checkout, backups, security and support. For more on what stores need from a server, read my guide to the best WooCommerce hosting.
Is Oracle Cloud Always Free really free forever?
Oracle lists those resources as Always Free, but its docs say idle Always Free instances may be reclaimed. Anything outside the Always Free limits is billed at normal rates. Read the current terms and set up billing alerts.
What is the best free way to learn WordPress?
LocalWP is my pick. It is free, runs on Mac, Windows and Linux, and you can break things without anyone seeing. WordPress Playground is great for quick tests that do not need saving.
Final Thoughts
Free WordPress hosting is real, but it is a tool for learning and testing, not a home for a business. Use LocalWP or Playground to practice, WordPress.com Free for a simple blog, and cloud free tiers if you want to learn servers. When the site starts to matter, move to a cheap paid plan with real backups and support.
Your next step is to write down what your site actually needs. The Start Here page walks you through a simple requirements sheet so you can pick the right plan the first time.
Related Articles
- Cheap WordPress Hosting in 2026: The Real 3-Year Cost After Renewal
- Best WordPress Hosting in 2026: 9 Hosts Compared
- How to Migrate a WordPress Site to a New Host
- Fastest WordPress Hosting
- Web Hosting for Beginners
Trevor Fenner publishes Hosting Paradise and Ecommerce Paradise. His guides cover web hosting, website migration, backups, and software for online businesses.