I'm building a graduation project with a Next.js frontend, Traefik gateway, several NestJS services for authentication, issues, ingestion, and users, plus a FastAPI vector-search service. The infrastructure includes Kafka, MongoDB, PostgreSQL, MySQL with Keycloak, Consul, and Traefik. Each backend component runs in its own Docker container.
I'd like to deploy it in a production-like environment so I can demonstrate the full process—from development through deployment—with a domain, HTTPS, environment variables, authentication, databases, and separate frontend and backend services. Traffic will be extremely low, probably only one or two users, and cold starts are fine.
Are there any genuinely free hosting options that don't require a credit card and can support multiple Docker services with persistent storage? If not, what local or low-cost approach would best simulate a real client deployment?
5 Answers
You can expose a locally hosted deployment through a temporary tunnel such as ngrok, but treat that as a demonstration setup rather than a production service. Keep the databases and internal services private, and put authentication in front of anything reachable from the internet. A VPN or access gateway such as Tailscale or Cloudflare Access is safer than exposing the server directly by IP.
For a project this large, the easiest free approach is usually to run the complete stack on your own machine or on a spare computer. Use Docker Compose, a local domain, HTTPS certificates, and your existing CI/CD pipeline to make the workflow resemble production. It won’t be publicly hosted, but it gives you reliable persistent databases without fighting the limits of free hosting.
Before deploying everything, consider whether every infrastructure component is necessary for the demonstration. For one or two users, you might replace Kafka with a simpler queue, skip Consul if Docker networking is enough, and use one database server with separate databases where appropriate. Reducing the stack will make a free or inexpensive deployment much more realistic while still showing the important production concepts.
You can simulate a production environment locally with Docker Compose or a lightweight local Kubernetes cluster such as kind. Add a reverse proxy, local DNS, TLS certificates, secrets stored outside the images, health checks, persistent volumes, and CI/CD deployment scripts. Tools that emulate cloud APIs can help if you want to practice infrastructure automation, but they won’t remove the need to manage the actual containers and databases.
A free hosted environment may not be a great fit for this architecture. Kafka, several databases, Keycloak, Consul, and multiple application containers can exceed the CPU, memory, storage, and sleeping limits of most free tiers. A small Linux VM is the closest practical equivalent to production, but genuinely free providers often require verification or have strict resource limits. Even a low-cost VM may be more dependable than stitching together many free services.
That makes sense. My goal is mainly to demonstrate a realistic deployment process, so I may use a small VM if I can’t find a suitable no-card option.
I’d like to include a domain, HTTPS, environment variables, and authentication in the demonstration, so a protected tunnel could work as a compromise while keeping the services local.