whichdevtool?
Menu
StacksDirectory Pricing changes Glossary
VPS and cloud servers App hosting and PaaS Managed databases Transactional email APIs Email marketing and newsletters Domain registrars CDN, DNS and edge security Monitoring, uptime and error tracking Auth and identity Frontend and full-stack frameworks Backend frameworks UI component libraries AI model APIs File and object storage Payments and billing Background jobs, queues and workflows ORMs and database toolkits

Kubernetes-based PaaS

Northflank

A developer platform built on Kubernetes that runs services, jobs, databases and GPU workloads on Northflank's cloud or inside your own AWS, GCP, Azure or other cluster.

Visit northflank.com ↗ Alternatives Free tier EU region
Northflank homepage
§1

Overview

Northflank is a platform layer on Kubernetes. From one UI, CLI, API or GitOps setup you build code from GitHub, GitLab or Bitbucket, run it as services or scheduled jobs, attach managed database and queue addons and volumes, and promote releases through pipelines with preview environments per pull request. GPU workloads (L4 to H100 and RTX PRO 6000) run alongside CPU services.

Its distinctive feature is Bring Your Own Cloud: the same platform can deploy into your own EKS, GKE, AKS, Oracle, Civo, CoreWeave or bare-metal Kubernetes cluster, so data stays in your account while developers keep the PaaS workflow. Enterprise customers can run the control plane in their own VPC.

On Northflank's managed cloud you pay per second for vCPU and memory, with preset sizes from $2.70 a month (0.1 vCPU, 256 MB) up to 20 dedicated vCPUs. Teams are free, with no per-seat fees. The Sandbox tier gives two always-on services, one database and two cron jobs at no cost for evaluation. Egress at $0.06/GB is higher than some rivals.

§2

Pricing and plans

Free tier

Sandbox tier: 2 free always-on services, 1 free database and 2 free cron jobs, intended for testing the platform.

At the limit Not stated The vendor does not say what happens at the limit, or we have not found it yet.

Plan Price What you get
Sandbox $0 2 services, 1 database, 2 cron jobs, always on
nf-compute-10 $2.70/mo 0.1 shared vCPU, 256 MB
nf-compute-20 $5.40/mo 0.2 shared vCPU, 512 MB
nf-compute-50 $12/mo 0.5 shared vCPU, 1 GB
nf-compute-100-2 $24/mo 1 dedicated vCPU, 2 GB
NVIDIA H100 80GB $2.74/hr GPU workloads
Enterprise Custom Run in your VPC, SSO, audit logs, 24/7 support and SLA

Pay-as-you-go unit prices: $0.01667 per vCPU-hour, $0.00833 per GB-hour of memory, $0.15/GB-month disk, $0.06/GB egress (ingress free; $0.02/GB cross-zone with zonal redundancy). Prorated to the second, no seat pricing. When deploying into your own cloud (BYOC) you also pay that cloud provider. We did not find a compliance list on the pages we read.

Source: northflank.com/pricing · prices as published, excluding tax.

§3

What it does

Bring Your Own Cloud
Deploy into your own AWS, GCP, Azure, Oracle or other Kubernetes clusters with the same workflow.
Pipelines and previews
Build, deploy and release pipelines with preview environments from pull requests.
Addons
Managed databases, caches and queues with backups, provisioned next to services.
GPU workloads
On-demand GPUs including H100 80GB at $2.74/hr, plus spot instances and fractional GPUs.
Jobs
Cron and one-off jobs billed only while they run.
Templates and GitOps
Reusable infrastructure-as-code templates synced from Git.
§4

Strengths and limitations

Strengths

  • Can run inside your own cloud account without changing the developer workflow.
  • Very small container sizes from $2.70/month.
  • No seat-based pricing; teams included.
  • Free Sandbox services do not sleep.

Limitations

  • Egress is $0.06/GB, more than several competitors.
  • The Sandbox tier is limited to 2 services, 1 database and 2 cron jobs.
  • SSO, audit logs and SLAs require an Enterprise agreement.
  • Kubernetes-based concepts add some learning curve compared with simpler PaaS products.
§5

Who it suits

Good for

  • Startups that expect to move into their own AWS/GCP/Azure account later
  • Teams running both web services and GPU jobs
  • Regulated companies that need workloads in their VPC

Look elsewhere if

  • Bandwidth-heavy public sites
  • Developers who want the simplest possible click-to-deploy host
§6

Alternatives to Northflank

Tool From Free option Stages
Cloudflare Workers (incl. Pages) Edge serverless platform
$5/mo Free tier
Render Managed PaaS
$7/mo Free tier
Netlify Frontend and serverless platform
$9/mo Free tier
Vercel Frontend and serverless platform
$20/mo Free tier
Google Cloud Run Serverless containers
Usage-based Free tier
Fly.io Global VM platform
$1.94/mo Paid

All app hosting and PaaS →

§7

Questions

Does Northflank have a free tier?

Yes, the Sandbox tier includes 2 free always-on services, 1 free database and 2 free cron jobs.

How much does Northflank compute cost?

$0.01667 per vCPU-hour and $0.00833 per GB of memory per hour; the smallest preset (0.1 vCPU, 256 MB) is $2.70/month.

Can Northflank deploy to my own AWS account?

Yes. With Bring Your Own Cloud it deploys into your EKS, GKE, AKS and other Kubernetes clusters, with no added Northflank cost for running in your VPC on pay-as-you-go.

Sources read for this page