How Much Does an Astro Website Cost? (Real Numbers)
An Astro site can cost $0 a year. Here's what's free, what costs money, and what we actually pay for this site, so you can plan before you start.
By the AstroBeginner team. Reviewed by Anil Thaakran, Head of Business DevelopmentPublished 6 minute readComplete beginner
In this guide
People ask this before anything else, so here’s the honest answer. An Astro website can cost nothing. Most cost about $10 a year. Here’s where every dollar goes, and which ones you can skip.
The short version
| Thing | What it costs | Can you skip it? |
|---|---|---|
| Astro itself | Free | It’s open source. There’s no paid version. |
| Hosting | Free | Our picks, Spacefast and Cloudflare, both have free plans that fit a normal site. So do Netlify and GitHub Pages. |
| A domain name | About $10 to $15 a year | Yes, if you’re happy with an address like yoursite.pages.dev. |
| A theme | Free, or $30 to $100 once | Yes. Free themes are good. |
| A CMS like EmDash | Free | Yes. You only need one if non-coders will edit the site. |
| An AI helper | Free chats, or about $20 a month | Yes. Every lesson here shows the exact lines to type. |
Add it up: a complete, live website for $0, or about $12 a year with your own name on it.
Why hosting is free
An Astro site is a static site. It’s a folder of finished files. Serving a folder of files is cheap for a host, so they give it away to get you in the door.
- Spacefast, our pick for most sites, has a free plan with 20 sites and custom domains. Drag your folder onto a web page, or run one command. It’s made by the company behind WordPress.com.
- Cloudflare, our pick for EmDash, serves static files for free with no limit on visitors. That’s what runs this site. Our guide.
- Netlify has a free plan and lets you publish by dragging a folder onto a web page. Lesson 7 of our free course shows it.
- GitHub Pages is free with a GitHub account. Our guide.
- Vercel is free for personal sites. A business site needs a paid plan.
WordPress hosting, by contrast, starts at about $3 a month on a cheap shared server and climbs fast. That’s because WordPress needs a computer running a program and a database for every visit. Astro doesn’t.
The domain name
This is the one thing worth paying for. A .com costs about $11 to $15 a year, depending on where you buy it. On November 8, 2026, Porkbun listed .com at $11.81 a year. Cloudflare Registrar sells domains at cost with no markup.
Watch for the first-year trick. Some sellers show $1 for year one and charge $20 every year after. Look at the renewal price, not the headline. How to register a domain walks through it.
Things that are free but look like they should cost money
- HTTPS, the padlock in the address bar. Every host above gives you a certificate for free and renews it for you.
- Search on your site. We use Pagefind, which is free and runs with no server.
- A contact form. Free services forward the messages to your email. How to add one.
- Comments. Giscus stores them on GitHub for free.
- A newsletter. Buttondown is free for your first 100 subscribers, and Kit is free up to 10,000. How to start one.
- Web fonts. Fontsource packages are free and load from your own site. How to add fonts.
Things that do cost money
- A paid theme, $30 to $100, once. A shortcut to a finished design.
- An AI coding tool. Claude Code and Codex need a paid plan, usually about $20 a month. The free chats work fine for the paste-it-yourself method. Our AI guides.
- Email at your domain, like you@yoursite.com. Not part of the website, but people often want it. Cloudflare can forward email to your Gmail for free. A real inbox costs $6 or so a month.
- A developer, if you’d rather not do it yourself. Hourly rates vary a lot. This site exists so you don’t need one.
What we pay for AstroBeginner
| Per year | |
|---|---|
| Domain, astrobeginner.com | About $10 |
| Hosting on Cloudflare | $0 |
| Fonts, search, analytics, tools | $0 |
| Total for the site itself | About $10 |
We also pay for Claude Code, which we use to draft guides. That’s a choice about how we work, not a cost of running an Astro site.
Where to go next
- Best hosting for Astro compares the free plans properly.
- Domain name vs web hosting if those two words still blur together.
- Start the free course and build the $0 version this weekend.
Frequently asked questions
Can I run an Astro website for free?
Yes. Hosting on Spacefast, Cloudflare, Netlify or GitHub Pages can be free, and Astro itself is free. The one thing most people pay for is a domain name, about $10 to $15 a year. You can skip even that and use the free address your host gives you.
Do I need to pay for a theme?
No. There are hundreds of free Astro themes. Paid themes exist, usually $30 to $100 once, and they're a shortcut, not a need.
What does AstroBeginner cost to run?
The domain, about $10 a year. Hosting on Cloudflare is free. The fonts, search, and every tool on the site are free. We pay for AI help, which is a choice, not a need.
Stuck on a step?
Check the common errors guide, look up a word in the glossary, or ask the friendly people in the official Astro and EmDash Discords. How to ask so people can help.