4.8 
Free Linux hosting is a type of web hosting service that allows you to create, launch, and maintain a website while using various Linux OS distributions. With free Linux hosting, you’ll be able to make your website available online and accessible to billions of people across the world. That’s because this service provides a way for you to store your website’s files and transmit them to those who want to see them, no matter where they’re at.
Here Are the Top 6 Free Linux Hosting Providers:
- Kamatera – Best Free Linux Hosting Provider for Scalability
- Hostinger – Best All-In-One Free Linux Hosting Provider
- A2 Hosting – Best Free Linux Hosting Provider for Speed
- InterServer – Best Free Linux Hosting Provider for Security
- Knownhost – Best Fully-Managed Free Linux Hosting Provider
- HostArmada – The Best Free Cloud-Based Linux Hosting Provider
The Best Free Linux Hosting Services of 2023 (Bought and Tested):
Kamatera is an excellent web hosting provider that offers an enterprise-grade cloud platform that’s ideal for Linux users. Also, this provider is highly scalable and offers flexible pricing. Namely, with Kamatera, you can pay by the hour, minute, or on a monthly basis, meaning that you can only pay for the resources you need.
- Overall Score: 4.8
- Pricing: 4.7
- Features: 4.8
- Performance: 5.0
- Support: 4.9
- User Friendly: 4.9
Pricing: Kamatera allows you to pay by the minute, hour, or month and pay only for the resources you use. You can cancel anytime; the plans start at $0.005/hour or $4/month.
Features: You’ll get flexible, cost-effective cloud servers, cloud block storage, a private cloud network, a cloud load balancer, a cloud firewall, managed cloud services, and more.
Performance: Kamatera offers an enterprise-grade cloud infrastructure, no single point of failure and a 99.95% uptime guarantee for your websites. Also, it provides high-performance data centers in America, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East.
Support: The provider offers 24/7 customer support with fast response times. You can reach it via live chat, phone, and email. You can also get fully managed VPS hosting and let Kamatera handle everything for you.
User Friendly: Kamatera has a straightforward user interface with a fast setup process. All you’ll have to do is choose a VPS plan or make your own, and then you can manage your VPS hosting right from your dashboard.
Pros & Cons
- Ability to pay by the minute, hour, or on a monthly basis.
- Excellent for all kinds of Linux distributions.
- 30-day money-back free trial.
- Requires a bit of technical knowledge.
Are you looking for a robust Linux hosting provider that comes with everything you need in one place? If you are, then Hostinger is the perfect solution for you. You’ll get everything from a website builder, email, and domains to excellent web hosting features and security, all wrapped up at affordable prices.
- Overall Score: 4.6
- Pricing: 4.6
- Features: 4.6
- Performance: 4.6
- Support: 4.7
- User Friendly: 4.7
Pricing: Hostinger offers four Linux hosting plans, and all of them come with 30-day money-back guarantees. The cheapest plan costs $1.99 (on a four-year billing period) and includes hosting for one website, 50 GB SSD storage, weekly backups, and unlimited bandwidth.
Features: You’ll get access to features like free SSL, CDN, managed WordPress, a drag-and-drop website builder, AI website creation, 150+ designer-made templates, AI SEO, an AI copywriting tool, DDoS protection, Web Application Firewall, malware scanner, and more.
Performance: Hostinger comes with a 99.9% uptime guarantee and offers state-of-the-art data centers all over the world. In addition, it has an in-house CDN and uses fast-paced SSD storage, LiteSpeed cache, and ObjectCache to improve your speed.
Support: With Hostinger, you’ll get 24/7 customer support via live chat and email. Also, you can access the provider’s Knowledge Base whenever you need and find numerous articles, guides, and tutorials.
User Friendly: This web host comes with an intuitive hosting dashboard, one-click installs for various apps, a drag-and-drop website builder, an AI builder, guided setups, and an AI assistant that will help you set up and manage your website.
Pros & Cons
- Low prices for feature-rich plans.
- Offers everything needed to create and host a website in one place.
- Reliable and stable performance with a 99.9% uptime guarantee.
- There is no free plan (but you can try it out risk-free for 30 days).
A2 Hosting is the fastest Linux hosting provider available in the market. With it, you can get Turbo Servers that come with 20x faster loading speeds and 3x faster storage. In addition, you’ll receive excellent customer support, as well as easy-to-use features and managed and unmanaged services.
- Overall Score: 4.7
- Pricing: 4.6
- Features: 4.7
- Performance: 4.7
- Support: 4.7
- User Friendly: 4.7
Pricing: A2 Hosting’s shared hosting plan costs $2.99/month (on a yearly basis) and includes hosting for one website, 100GB of SSD storage, one CPU core, and 1GB of physical memory.
Features: With A2 Hosting’s Linux shared hosting plans, you’ll get free SSL certificates, free website migration, A2 Cloud Backup powered by JetBackup, fast-paced NVMe, cPanel control panel, automatic backups, Cloudflare CDN, and more.
Performance: A2 Hosting offers 12-core minimum, 64GB RAM minimum data centers, fast-paced NVMe and SSD storage, Cloudflare CDN, and a 99.9% uptime guarantee.
Support: You’ll get 24/7 customer support via Guru Crew via live chat, phone, and email, as well as through an extensive knowledge base with many guides, tutorials, and articles.
User Friendly: A2 Hosting offers one-click installs for various apps and CMSs, a drag-and-drop editor, an easy-to-use website builder, and fast website setup and deployment.
Pros & Cons
- Lightning-fast speeds and data centers all over the world.
- Great deals on long-term plans.
- Every plan comes with a 30-day money-back guarantee.
- It costs more on renewal.
Every web hosting provider knows how important security is for website owners. However, not many take it as seriously as InterServer, which has developed its own security solution – InterShield, that blocks web attacks, scans for viruses automatically, and uses a Machine Learning Firewall to protect you from unwanted intruders.
- Overall Score: 4.4
- Pricing: 4.5
- Features: 4.4
- Performance: 4.4
- Support: 4.3
- User Friendly: 4.4
Pricing: InterServer has a one-size-fits-all shared Linux hosting plan that costs $2.5/month and includes unlimited storage, weekly backups, unlimited email accounts, and unlimited FTP accounts.
Features: InterServer’s one-size-fits-all Linux hosting plan comes with unlimited data transfers, over 450 cloud apps, a SitePad website builder, InterShield protection, free SSL certificates, free website migration, free Cloudflare CDN, Cloud Linux OS, DirectAdmin, and more.
Performance: This provider comes with a 99.9% uptime guarantee and average response times of 3.5s, which is excellent. Also, it uses LiteSpeed web servers, fast-paced RAID 10 SSD storage, SSD caching servers, and Cloudflare to boost your performance.
Support: You’ll get fast customer support from this web host, available 24/7 via email, live chat, phone, and a ticketing system. Also, you can visit the “Tips” section on its website to find tutorials and guides.
User Friendly: By default, InterServer provides the DirectAdmin control panel for managing websites. This control panel is great for beginners and allows you to manage everything in one place, and it’s also compatible with different Linux distributions.
Pros & Cons
- 30-day money-back guarantee.
- A robust security solution called InterShield.
- One-click installs for over 450 apps.
- Doesn’t provide a free plan (but has a 30-day money-back guarantee).
KnownHost’s fully managed Linux services are ideal for those who want a more hands-off website hosting experience. With KnownHost, all the technical tasks and aspects of your hosting and website will be taken care of by its team of experts, leaving you with time to focus on your business and other important obligations.
- Overall Score: 4.9
- Pricing: 4.8
- Features: 4.9
- Performance: 4.9
- Support: 5.0
- User Friendly: 4.9
Pricing: KnownHost offers four Linux hosting plans that have a 30-day money-back guarantee. The cheapest plan costs $3.47/month and includes one domain, one CPU core, 512MB RAM, and 5GB of NVMe storage.
Features: Some of the features that you’ll get with KnownHost include MySQL databases, unlimited premium bandwidth, free SSL certificates, Patchman, Imunify360, multiple PHP versions, automated backups, free standard migrations, and more.
Performance: KnownHost offers incredible speeds and performance powered by a 99.99+% uptime guarantee, LiteSpeed web servers, NVMe storage, LSCache, and high-quality AMD EPYC processors.
Support: In addition to fully managed services, you’ll also get 24/7 customer support via phone, email, and live chat. Also, you’ll have access to a wide range of written guides and tutorials via KnownHost’s Knowledge Base, which you can find on its website.
User Friendly: KnownHost’s fully managed Linux hosting is excellent for beginners as it takes care of setups, updates, and server maintenance for you. The provider also offers the Softaculous one-click app installer and the cPanel control panel, which is one of the easiest-to-use control panels on the market.
Pros & Cons
- Blazing-fast Linux hosting backed by NVMe storage and LiteSpeed web servers.
- 30-day money-back guarantees on all Linux hosting plans.
- Excellent 24/7/365 customer support.
- It doesn’t have a free plan (but it has a 30-day money-back guarantee that you can use to try out its services instead).
HostArmada is a top-tier web hosting provider that offers Linux hosting plans by default, which come with top-notch features, affordable prices, and excellent performance. All of its services work on a robust SSD-based cloud platform, which ensures that you experience minimal downtime.
- Overall Score: 5.0
- Pricing: 4.9
- Features: 5.0
- Performance: 5.0
- Support: 5.0
- User Friendly: 5.0
Pricing: HostArmada’s entry-level Linux shared hosting plan costs $2.49/month on a triennial basis and includes 15GB of SSD storage, 2 CPU cores, 2 GB of RAM, and hosting for one website. Also, all plans, except for the monthly ones, come with a 45-day money-back guarantee.
Features: Some of the features that you’ll get include free SSL for all websites, free website migration, free web server caches, a free cPanel control panel, 7 daily backups, malware protection, and more.
Performance: HostArmada has a robust SSD-based cloud platform, LiteSpeed and NGINX web servers, fast-paced SSD storage, fast loading speeds, and a 99.9% uptime guarantee.
Support: You’ll get 24/7/365 customer support via phone, live chat, and a ticketing system, and the live chat has a 10-minute average response time.
User Friendly: HostArmada is excellent for beginners, offering a drag-and-drop SiteBuilder, one-click app installs, “Prepare for Launch” features and a fast setup process.
Pros & Cons
- Enterprise-grade data centers are available in many different locations.
- A robust cloud platform.
- Feature-rich plans with many freebies.
- No money-back guarantee on monthly plans.
Ranking comparison between the Top Providers
Best Free Linux Hosting Services: Final Recommendations
Finding a reliable free Linux hosting provider that not only fits super-tight budgets but also gives you fast page-loading speeds and performance is quite the rarity. However, by taking the 6 providers from our list into consideration, you’ll ensure that, no matter which provider you choose, you’ll get all the resources, features, and services you need to host and run a website successfully. So, all you’ll need to do is decide which of the 6 providers suits your needs best and go for that one.
During our deep dive into the 6 providers, we found that Time4VPS is the best free Linux hosting provider overall. So, by choosing this provider, you’ll get the absolute best Linux hosting services, as well as excellent deals.
How Do We Rank, and How Should You Choose Your Free Linux Hosting?
- Performance15%
- Customer Support12%
- Ease of Use10%
- Compatibility8%
- Hosting Features10%
- Value for Money10%
- Flexibility and Scalability5%
- User Reviews30%
All our lists where we rank the best hosting providers in certain categories are made by testing each category in great detail. Namely, we make sure that each factor that affects the category in question is covered and assign them specific weights that show how important they are. Moreover, our hosting experts test each provider separately and take thousands of user reviews into consideration so as to ascertain how satisfied people are with the providers in the long term.
Below, you’ll find all the factors that we used to test the providers and that you should consider when choosing the best free Linux hosting provider:
- Performance (15%): We consider factors like page-loading speed, website performance, uptime, downtime, storage, the quality of the data centers, hardware, etc.
- Customer Support (12%): What kind of customer support will you receive? Can you reach it whenever you need to? How many customer support channels are there? Is the customer service reliable? Is it free of charge?
- Ease of Use (10%): Is the Linux hosting provider beginner-friendly? Does it provide a user-friendly dashboard? Is the dashboard easy to navigate? Will you need some tech skills to find your way around?
- Compatibility (8%): Is the provider compatible with Linux? Can you use it only with Linux? Can you use it on different Linux distributions?
- Hosting Features (10%): We consider features like storage, RAM, bandwidth, traffic, control panels, domain registration/transfer, website builders, website migrations, etc.
- Value for Money (10%): Is there a free trial? Is there a free plan? Are the plans worth the money? Are the prices fair? Will you pay more for renewal?
- Flexibility and Scalability (5%): Can you grow your website without any interruptions? Can you easily upgrade your plan when you need to? How high or low can you go?
- User Reviews (30%): We go through thousands of independent user reviews in order to see how satisfied people are with the providers in the long term and whether they’d recommend them to others.
What Is Free Linux Hosting, and Who Is It For?
Free Linux hosting is a web hosting service that allows you to host your website using Linux or other Linux distributions as your OS. Typically, Linux is the go-to OS that web hosting providers offer in their plans, so there are plenty of options to choose from.
Also, Linux hosting is highly secure, and since Linux, as an OS, is open-source, you’ll often get the freedom to add whichever security measures you want to your hosting plan. However, that still depends on your provider.
Free Linux hosting is best for users who want to host websites and apps on servers that run on Linux OS. Also, it’s ideal for those on tighter budgets, as Linux is free to use, meaning that you won’t have to pay for a license like you would with Windows.
This web hosting service is also excellent for hosting game servers, as well as a wide range of web apps and projects. It’s good for both beginners and more advanced users, along with those who want to integrate their websites with a wider range of third-party tools and features.
