Northflank
northflank.com · 2 records in Compute, Egress and tunnels · JSON
Records 2
- fails: identityNorthflank, Sandbox (free)
Computefree tieridentity cardlimit write-gatedevidence documentedstale on 2026-11-24
- fails: quotaNorthflank (free)
Egress and tunnelsfree tieridentity emailno cardlimit volume-quotaevidence documentedstale on 2026-11-23
Northflank, Sandbox (free)
Compute- Free allowance
- Sandbox plan at USD 0: 'Up to $20/mo of resources on Northflank Cloud', '2 services, 2 jobs, and 1 database', 'Always on, no sleeping', plus '1 BYOC cluster, up to 12 vCPU and 48 GB'.
- Verdict
- fails: identitythe identity required is not reachable without it
- Cost
- free tier
- Identity
- cardcard required, no phone
- Binding limit
- write-gatedwrites need approval, payment or a gate
- Evidence
- documented7 sources; a first-party page was read and the sentence quoted
- Freshness
- stale on 2026-11-24checked 2026-10-24 (live); stale on 2026-11-24
| Free tier | Sandbox plan at USD 0: 'Up to $20/mo of resources on Northflank Cloud', '2 services, 2 jobs, and 1 database', 'Always on, no sleeping', plus '1 BYOC cluster, up to 12 vCPU and 48 GB'. unit mixed; metered on wall-clock |
|---|---|
| Price | none stated |
| Limits |
A card entered for the paid tier is only verified: 'No — when you enter a card we only verify the card. Your card is only charged at the end of the billing cycle.' No hold amount is stated. |
| Binding | write-gated the card requirement is the first thing that fails: it is universal and it blocks the first service, whatever the plan. |
| Identity | card A payment method is required for every plan: the billing documentation states 'all users must add a payment method to start creating resources on Northflank, regardless of plan selection'. The Sandbox plan card carries a 'No card needed' badge and the pricing FAQ answers 'when you enter a card we only verify the card', so the same page both advertises and presupposes a card. No hold amount is stated. |
| Egress | Network egress USD 0.06 per GB, ingress free. The free plan publishes no separate egress allowance, so the inference recorded here is that egress is drawn from the same USD 20 resource allowance; the pricing page does not say so in as many words. |
| Per-object cap | 2 services, 2 jobs and 1 database; no cap on a single service's size beyond the USD 20 monthly resource allowance |
| Retention | resources persist while the plan holds; the free allowance resets monthly and nothing states a deletion on exhaustion |
| Interface | ssh git deploy, a public endpoint, a CLI and an API |
| Tooling | the Northflank CLI and API, Docker and buildpacks, a managed database |
| Composes with | a container platform where the free tier never sleeps, and the card is the price of entry |
| Reliability | no reliability event observed; the free tier is described as always-on, which is why the unresolved card question matters |
| Notes | Arithmetic: 730 h x (0.5 x USD 0.01667 + 1 x USD 0.00833) = USD 12.17 a month for an always-on 0.5 vCPU / 1 GB service, leaving USD 7.83 = 130 GB of egress at USD 0.06/GB if egress draws on the same allowance, which is inferred and not stated. The 'No card needed' badge on the pricing page is contradicted by the billing docs and by the page's own FAQ, which presupposes a card. The USD 20 a month of resources is real and sits behind the card. A 2026-10-24 re-read also found the plan is 'Always on, no sleeping', which is the only free-tier-shaped offer in this market that does not sleep, and 730 h x (0.5 x 0.01667 + 1 x 0.00833) = USD 12.17 of the allowance. |
| Evidence note | documented plan contents, rates and the cheapest plan read on the pricing page; the card requirement is documented on two first-party pages that disagree |
| Parsed numbers |
|
Evidence 7
| date | source | what it proved |
|---|---|---|
| 2026-10-23 | northflank.com/pricing | quoted: 'Up to $20/mo of resources on Northflank Cloud', 'Always on, no sleeping', 'No card needed' |
| 2026-10-23 | northflank.com/pricing | quoted plan rows: nf-compute-50 0.5 vCPU/1 GB $0.01667/h $12.00/mo; nf-compute-100-2 1 vCPU/2 GB $0.03333/h $24.00/mo; nf-compute-200 2 vCPU/4 GB $0.06667/h $48.00/mo |
| 2026-10-24 | northflank.com/pricing | quoted: 'No card needed', 'Up to $20/mo of resources on Northflank Cloud', 'Always on, no sleeping', 'CPU $0.01667/ vCPU / hour', 'Memory $0.00833/ GB / hour', 'nf-compute-400 ... 4 vCPU · 8 GB ... $0.13 ... $96.00'. |
| 2026-10-24 | northflank.com/pricing | quoted: 'Am I charged when I enter my credit card? No — when you enter a card we only verify the card. Your card is only charged at the end of the billing cycle.' and 'Payments are handled by Stripe and we accept Visa, Mastercard, and American Express.' |
| 2026-10-24 | northflank.com/pricing | quoted: 'Free / No card needed / 2 services, 2 jobs, and 1 database / Up to $20/mo of resources on Northflank Cloud / Always on, no sleeping' |
| 2026-10-24 | northflank.com/pricing | quoted: 'nf-compute-50 ... 0.5 vCPU 1 GB ... $0.01667 ... $12.00'; 'Network egress ... $0.06/ GB'; CPU $0.01667/vCPU/hour, memory $0.00833/GB/hour |
| 2026-10-24 | northflank.com/docs/v1/application/billing/pricing-on-northf | quoted: 'all users must add a payment method to start creating resources on Northflank, regardless of plan selection. This is to verify user identity' |
More fields 18
| shape | {"vcpu": 0.5,"ram_gib": 1,"disk_gib": null,"gpu_class": null,"gpu_count": null} |
|---|---|
| billing model | monthly-allowance |
| session cap | {"wall_clock_min": null,"idle_reap_s": null,"restart_required": false,"note": "the vendor states 'Always on, no sleeping'"} |
| persistent storage | {"included_gib": null,"price_gib_month": "USD 0.15 per GB-month for persistent SSD","durability": "pausing deletes ephemeral data","survives_stop": true,"survives_destroy": false,"max_retention": "while the service exists"} |
| network out | {"allow_outbound": true,"allow_inbound_listen": true,"ports": "the service's HTTP port plus TCP/UDP ports for non-HTTP services","static_ip": false,"ipv6": false,"per_session_bytes": null} |
| free tier kind | monthly-resource-allowance |
| granularity | {"min_billed_s": 0,"rounding_s": null} |
| burst x | 1.0 |
| ps | {"gib": null,"price": "volumes and persistence are available on the plan","durability": "volume","on_stop": true,"on_destroy": false,"retention": "until deleted"} |
| shape smallest | {"vcpu": 0.5,"ram_gib": 1} |
| term | monthly |
| m10h usd | 0.0 |
| m24h usd | 0.0 |
| price arithmetic | free within the USD 20 monthly resource allowance; the 0.5 vCPU / 1 GB shape consumes USD 12.17 a month of it at the published per-second rates |
| credit usd | 20 |
| credit months at shape | 0.21 |
| credit hours at shape | 153.8 |
| credit expiry | monthly; unused allowance does not accumulate |
Corrections
- 2026-10-23 Corrected on 2026-10-23: compute/databricks, compute/digitalocean, compute/linode and 6 more records
Northflank (free)
Egress and tunnels- Free allowance
- Up to $20 a month of free resources on Northflank Cloud, across 2 services, 2 jobs, and 1 database.
- Verdict
- fails: quotathe free allowance is too small to matter
- Cost
- free tier
- Identity
- emailno card, no phone
- Binding limit
- volume-quota$20/month of resources; egress $0.06/GB
- Evidence
- documented3 sources; a first-party page was read and the sentence quoted
- Freshness
- stale on 2026-11-23checked 2026-10-23 (live); stale on 2026-11-23
| Free tier | Up to $20 a month of free resources on Northflank Cloud, across 2 services, 2 jobs, and 1 database. unit mixed; metered on unstated |
|---|---|
| Price | USD 0 |
| Limits |
|
| Binding | volume-quota $20 of credit at $0.06/GB is 333 GB, 0.30 TiB, and only if no compute is spent. 1 TiB of egress alone would cost $61.44/month. |
| Identity | email "Sandbox Free No card needed". |
| Egress | Free Sandbox is a $20/month resource credit; network egress is $0.06/GB for everyone, so the credit buys at most 333 GB of egress if nothing else is spent.; ingress: tcp+udp free allowance: none published |
| Interface | rest, cli "Load balancers can be included in Northflank templates for infrastructure as code" plus a REST API. |
| Tooling | Dashboard, API, and template YAML (kind: LoadBalancer); point an A record at the provisioned IP. |
| Composes with | A Northflank UDP load balancer in front of a wg-quick sidecar gives a stable endpoint; the $20 credit and $0.06/GB egress cap the volume, not the protocol. |
| Reliability | "Updating a load balancer triggers re-provisioning. There may be a brief traffic interruption during the update." Backends must be running, not paused. |
| Notes | The most capable L4 product technically, and the least clear commercially: the pricing page prices an egress gateway ($15/gateway/month) but never prices the load balancer, and the plan matrix has no load-balancer row. Treat free-tier LB access as open, not as granted. |
| Evidence note | documented Whether the free Sandbox may create an L4 load balancer is not stated on any page read. |
| Parsed numbers |
|
Evidence 3
| date | source | what it proved |
|---|---|---|
| 2026-10-23 | northflank.com/docs/v1/application/network/configure-load-ba | L4 load balancers route "external TCP or UDP traffic", stable public IP, up to 100 ports, no rate limiting |
| 2026-10-23 | northflank.com/pricing | Free Sandbox: $20/month of resources, 2 services, no card; network egress $0.06/GB |
| 2026-10-23 | northflank.com/docs/v1/application/network/configure-ports | "Only HTTP and HTTP/2 ports can be publicly exposed. TCP and UDP service ports require a separate Layer 4 load balancer" |
More fields 6
| wg path | inside-udp |
|---|---|
| wg detail | A team-level Layer 4 load balancer with Protocol: TCP or UDP, a stable public IP once Provisioned, up to 100 ports, no TLS termination and no rate limiting. |
| ingress | tcp+udp |
| volume stated | Free Sandbox is a $20/month resource credit; network egress is $0.06/GB for everyone, so the credit buys at most 333 GB of egress if nothing else is spent. |
| bytes transit | yes |
| transit note | Northflank's cloud provisions the L4 balancer; the datagrams land on a user's service. |
Unknown values 2
- per object cap stated: the field does not apply to this kind of offer
- retention stated: the field does not apply to this kind of offer