Building a Lovable: where should it run?

Northflank vs Cloudflare vs Freestyle, compared on price and DNS control. Prices as of 14 Nov 2026. · Download PDF

Prompt → AI agent → Git repo → live preview sandbox → publish with a domain
Northflank: containers and databases. Cloudflare: global edge and DNS. Freestyle: VMs and Git for AI builders.
Freestyle
BUILD
Made for AI app builders: a git repo and dev server per project, live previews, free *.style.dev URLs.
Cloudflare
PUBLISH
The cheapest way to host thousands of user apps, and the best DNS control for customer domains.
Northflank
BACKENDS
Cheapest raw compute. Use it when a user's app needs a real server or a database.

💸 One live-preview hour (2 vCPU · 4–8 GB)

Northflank
$0.067
Cloudflare
$0.112
Freestyle
$0.132

Cloudflare: Containers standard-3 (2 vCPU, 8 GiB), with CPU billed only while busy (assumed 25%). At 100% CPU it would be $0.22. Northflank and Freestyle bill the whole allocation while the machine runs. Everything is billed by the second and stops when paused.

🧪 1,000 builders × 20 preview hours a month

Northflank
$1,333 / mo
Cloudflare
$2,240 / mo
Freestyle
$2,645 / mo

Freestyle costs the most per hour but you write the least code: git, dev servers, snapshots and an MCP interface for agents are built in. With Northflank or Cloudflare you build that layer yourself.

🚀 Hosting 1,000 published apps (100M requests a month)

Cloudflare
$158 / mo
Freestyle
deploy pricing not published (an always-on VM ≈ $48 per app)
Northflank
$12 per app container → $12,000

Cloudflare: Workers for Platforms at $25, plus $24 for requests, plus $18.80 for CPU, plus 900 extra custom domains at $0.10 = $90. Northflank can be far cheaper if many apps share one container, but then you lose isolation between apps.

🌐 DNS access: can your users bring their own domain?

A customer's domain is CNAMEd to your platform, which issues HTTPS automatically; free subdomains for everyone else
CloudflareFreestyleNorthflank
Free subdomain for every app✓ *.yours.com✓ *.style.dev◐ wildcard → 1 service
Customer domains through an API✓ Custom Hostnames✓ Domains API◐ mostly from the dashboard
Automatic HTTPS✓✓ incl. wildcard✓
You also run the DNS itself✓ full DNS host✗✗
Cost per customer domain100 free, then $0.10not publishedincluded
Catchwildcard customer domains are Enterprise onlyverify with a TXT record firstwildcard locks you to one region

🏷️ Entry prices

Freestyle
$0 → $50 → $500
  • Free: 10 VMs, hard caps
  • Hobby: 40 concurrent / 200 saved VMs
  • Pro: 400 concurrent / 4,000 saved VMs
  • $0.04 per vCPU-hour, $0.013 per GiB-hour
Cloudflare
$5 + $25
  • Workers Paid: $5
  • Workers for Platforms: $25 (20M requests, 1,000 apps)
  • Containers: pay per 10 ms
  • No egress fees on Workers or R2
Northflank
$0 → usage
  • Free: 2 services, 1 database
  • $0.017 per vCPU-hour, $0.008 per GB-hour
  • Egress $0.06/GB
  • BYOC: run it in your own AWS or GCP

✅ The stack to build

Build on Freestyle, publish on Cloudflare Workers for Platforms, domains through Cloudflare for SaaS, optional Northflank for backends
Week 1
Freestyle
Ship the editor and live previews fast on the free tier, then Hobby at $50.
On publish
Cloudflare
Build each app to a Worker, give it a free yourbrand subdomain, and add custom domains for $0.10 each.
Later
Northflank
Add it when apps need Postgres or long-running servers, or to cut preview costs about 2x at scale.