Every free host below puts your docs online; they differ in their limits, in whether a business may use them, and in how much of a documentation site you still have to build.
Figures come from each vendor's own pricing and documentation pages, as of September 2026. Check them again before you commit: free tiers change.
The six options at a glance#
| Option | Free tier | Limits worth knowing | You still add |
|---|---|---|---|
| GitHub Pages | Free; on GitHub Free the repository must be public | 1 GB per site, 100 GB a month soft bandwidth, 10 builds an hour; not for sites mainly about commercial transactions or SaaS | A docs theme, search, analytics |
| Vercel Hobby | $0 | Non-commercial, personal use only; 100 GB of Fast Data Transfer, 100 deployments a day | Docs framework, search |
| Netlify Free | $0 | 300 credits a month, hard limit: 15 credits per production deploy, 20 per GB of bandwidth | Docs framework, search |
| Cloudflare Pages | $0 | Static requests free and unlimited; 500 builds a month, one at a time | Docs framework, search |
| Read the Docs | Community plan, free for open-source projects | Ad-supported; paid Business plans start at $50 a month | The docs tool it builds: Sphinx, MkDocs, Docusaurus and others |
| Docsbook | 14-day Pro trial with $5 of AI credit, no card | After the trial the site stays published; AI features need Pro, $20 a month per project | Nothing to build or deploy |
What does "free" leave to you?#
A static host serves files. Everything that makes those files a documentation site is yours to choose, wire up and maintain:
- A docs framework — Jekyll, Docusaurus or another generator, and its upgrades.
- Search — a hosted service or a plugin.
- Answers — an AI chat is a separate service with its own bill.
- Being found — sitemaps, structured data,
llms.txt, and the ongoing work of fixing pages that nobody finds.
What does Docsbook include for free?#
Docsbook hosts the site and generates the parts a static host leaves out. After the 14-day trial, a project without a plan stays published as static pages:
- The site — every Markdown file in your repository, with
README.mdas the home page and folders as the sidebar. - Search — a search box on every page.
- For search engines and AI — a sitemap, JSON-LD,
llms.txtand a Markdown copy of each page. - Your domain — attached in Settings ▸ Domain & API once the trial has ended or you subscribe.
What switches off without a plan: the AI chat, the agents, translations and the analytics views. Every Docsbook site shows a small Powered by Docsbook badge.
Which free option should you pick?#
Free hosting solves serving; it does not tell you which page readers searched for and never found, or why ChatGPT cites a competitor instead of you. Docsbook's agents work on exactly that: Find wins fast.
FAQ#
Can I use Vercel's free plan for company docs?
Vercel's docs restrict the Hobby plan to non-commercial, personal use, as of September 2026. A Pro developer seat is $20 per user a month.
What happens when Netlify's free credits run out?
The Free plan has a 300-credit monthly hard limit with no automatic recharge. More usage means a paid plan: Personal at $9 a month or Pro from $20 a month.
Is Docsbook free after the trial?
The site stays published as static pages, with search, for as long as you like. The AI chat, agents, translations and analytics views need Pro at $20 a month per project.