Understanding Netlify pricing and limits

Netlify makes it easy to deploy and scale static sites, but understanding how pricing and limits work is important once your project starts getting real traffic.

This guide explains Netlify’s plans, bandwidth rules, build limits, and the most common surprises teams run into.

Netlify plans at a glance

Netlify offers several plans, but most projects start with one of these:

Free
Pro
Business
Enterprise (custom pricing)

The biggest differences between plans are bandwidth, build minutes, team features, and support.

Bandwidth limits explained

Bandwidth measures how much data your site sends to visitors.

Examples of what consumes bandwidth:

Page views
Image downloads
JavaScript and CSS assets
Large media files

Free plan bandwidth

The Free plan includes:

100 GB bandwidth per month per site

This is more than enough for:

Personal sites
Blogs
Small marketing pages
Early-stage projects

If you exceed the limit, Netlify will pause serving your site until the next billing cycle or until you upgrade.

Pro and Business bandwidth

Pro: Higher bandwidth limits with overage billing
Business: Significantly higher limits and priority infrastructure

Once you’re running ads, launching publicly, or serving large assets, upgrading becomes important.

Build minutes and deploy limits

Every time Netlify builds your site, it consumes build minutes.

What counts as build time

Build time includes:

Installing dependencies
Running your build command
Generating static pages
Server-side rendering steps

Free plan build limits

The Free plan includes:

300 build minutes per month

This is usually enough unless:

You deploy many times per day
You have slow builds
You use heavy frameworks without caching

Reducing build minute usage

Ways to stay under limits:

Enable build caching
Avoid unnecessary deploys
Use deploy previews selectively
Optimize static generation

Concurrent builds

Concurrent builds determine how many builds can run at the same time.

Free: Limited concurrency
Pro+: More parallel builds

This matters for teams and CI-heavy workflows.

Functions and edge limits

Serverless features also have limits:

Function invocations
Execution time
Background function usage
Edge function requests

Most small sites won’t hit these limits, but APIs and auth-heavy apps might.

Team and collaboration features

Pricing also affects:

Number of team members
Role-based access
Audit logs
Organization-level settings

For solo developers, Free or Pro is usually enough. Teams benefit from Pro or Business plans.

Common pricing surprises

A few things catch people off guard:

Image-heavy sites consume bandwidth fast
Frequent CMS-triggered builds eat build minutes
Preview deploys count toward limits
Large monorepos can slow builds

Monitoring usage early helps avoid outages.

How to monitor usage

You can track usage in the Netlify dashboard:

Bandwidth consumption
Build minutes used
Function usage
Historical trends

Set reminders to check usage after launches or campaigns.

Choosing the right plan

A simple rule of thumb:

Hobby or learning: Free
Production site or startup: Pro
High traffic or teams: Business
Enterprise scale: Enterprise

You can always upgrade as your site grows.

Final thoughts

Netlify’s pricing is generous, but it’s not unlimited. Understanding how bandwidth and build minutes work lets you scale confidently without surprises.

If you plan for growth early, Netlify remains one of the most developer-friendly hosting platforms available.