Compared

Metered by the minute, or a fixed instance.

This is the comparison where the answer genuinely flips depending on the size of what you run.

The short answer

Render is cheaper for a small service that runs constantly: $7 a month buys 512 MB and half a core on a free workspace, where the same shape metered on Dockup is about $15. Once the workspace fee arrives — $25 a month on Render Pro — the direction reverses. Dockup is also cheaper on egress and does not bill custom domains separately.

Line by line

Compared on	Dockup	Render
Workspace fee	$5 Hobby · $20 Pro	$0 Hobby · $25 Pro · $499 Scale
Small always-on service	≈ $15.20 metered	$7 · Starter instance
Medium service, 2 GB	≈ $40.52 metered	$25 · Standard instance
Total for medium on a paid workspace	$40.52	$50.00
Egress	$0.09 / GB	$0.15 / GB
Custom domains	Included, with TLS	$0.25 per domain per month
Idle capacity	Metered per minute — an idle service costs less	Instance is billed whole
Charged per team member	No	No
Linux and Windows VMs	Yes	No
Deploy to servers you own	Yes, over SSH	No

Render figures are their published list prices, checked on 22 August 2026. They change without notice — verify before deciding. Ours are on the pricing page, per unit, so you can redo this arithmetic yourself.

Choose Render if

You run one small service, constantly, and nothing else. A $7 Starter instance on a free workspace is hard to beat and Dockup does not try to.
You want HIPAA compliance features, which Render sells as part of its plans.

Choose Dockup if

Your services are not busy all the time. Metering per minute means a staging environment that runs eight hours a day is billed for eight hours a day; a fixed instance is billed for twenty-four.
You are already paying for a workspace. Once Render Pro is on the bill, its instance pricing has to beat Dockup by $25 a month before it wins.
You move data out. $0.09 against $0.15 per GB is a 40% difference on the line that surprises people.
You need a VM or a server of your own in the same account as the containers.

Questions this page gets asked

Is Render cheaper than Dockup?

For a single small always-on service, yes — a $7 Starter instance on Render's free workspace beats roughly $15 of metered compute on Dockup. Once you are on Render Pro at $25 a month, the workspace fee outweighs the instance saving for most workloads.

What is the difference between metered and instance pricing?

Render sells a fixed instance size and bills it whole, whether or not you use it. Dockup meters CPU and memory per minute, so a service that idles overnight costs less overnight. Fixed sizing is cheaper when utilisation is high and constant; metering is cheaper when it is not.

Do either charge extra for custom domains?

Render charges $0.25 per additional domain per month. On Dockup custom domains are included with TLS on the paid plans.

Compare something else

Try it against your own workload.

The free plan grants $10 of infrastructure credit at signup, needs no card, and does not sleep.

Start free with $10 credit See the rates