Render vs Koyeb

Developer-friendly and jam packed with powerful features, the Koyeb serverless platform is the fastest way to deploy cloud-native applications globally.

We designed Koyeb to deliver all the features that have become table stakes for modern applications: global deployments, private networks with service mesh and discovery, and much more.

We created this comparison to highlight the key differences between Render and Koyeb. We hope it helps you decide if Koyeb is the best fit for your workload. In our opinion, of course, it is! 😇

Features

Type of services: On Koyeb, you can host all your web apps and services, APIs, static and dynamic websites. With Render, you can host static websites, cron jobs, and services. Koyeb lets you deploy pre-built containers and applications directly from git while Render does not provide pre-built containers.

Built-in CDN and edge network: Render's CDN is available only for static websites whereas Koyeb's CDN is available in 250+ edge locations for all types of web services and apps, including static and dynamic sites.

Private network, service mesh and service discovery: Render does not provide a built-in service mesh and service discovery mechanism with its private network. On Render, each team has a private network per region, meaning private services cannot communicate with one another between different regions and there is no app-level isolation. On Koyeb, services can speak between different regions thanks to Koyeb's built-in service mesh and benefit from service discovery, load-balancing, automatic TLS encryption, and native app-level isolation.

Horizontal scaling: Horizontal scaling is a feature that lets you manually determine the number of instances you will always have running. Koyeb and Render both offer horizontal scaling.

Computing power: While Render provides different services on top of AWS (Amazon Web Services) and GCP, Koyeb is focused on providing a powerful serverless compute solution on top of bare metal servers and relies on Firecracker microVMs to run your applications. Firecracker combines the isolation and security offered by full virtualization solutions with the speed and density provided by container technology.

Automatic HTTPS: With Koyeb, all of your apps and APIs will be automatically secured by a TLS certificate from Let's Encrypt.

Autohealing: Koyeb offers built-in TCP health checks on all applications you deploy. The platform also lets you define additional HTTP health checks to ensure your applications are running properly, and automatically respawn them if they become unresponsive.

Data residency and compliance: Koyeb lets you perform simple, controllable, multi-region deployments to respect sovereignty and compliance requirements. Render is also committed to data residency and compliance. Render's GDPR compliance for its Germany location requires disabling automatic backups for their managed PostgreSQL databases.

Developer experience

• Deployment methods: Koyeb supports git-driven deployment and Docker deployment from any container registry whereas Render only supports git-driven deployment.
• Multi-region deployments: If you want to deploy your app in multiple regions on Render, you need to create a new service for each region whereas Koyeb lets you select the regions your service will run when you deploy it for the first time.
• CLI: The Koyeb CLI (opens in a new tab) allows you to manage your applications and automate their deployments directly from the terminal. Render also has a CLI.
• Inter-service communication: Thanks to Koyeb's built-in service mesh, services deployed on Koyeb in one region can talk to services deployed in other regions. In contrast, services deployed on Render in one private network cannot communicate with services deployed in another region.
• Rollback: Koyeb's built-in versioning lets your rollback easily, which lets you deploy new features faster and fearlessly.
• Git-driven CI/CD: With a simple git push, Koyeb handles building and deploying your app.
• Koyeb Secrets provide a simple solution to pass confidential information, such as passwords and tokens, to your application.

Performance

Cutting-edge serverless technology on high-end hardware: With Koyeb, all of your apps are transparently deployed in MicroVMs on bare metal servers. MicroVMs provide excellent security and performance thanks to hardware-assisted virtualization. Moreover, Koyeb uses the latest generations of Intel and AMD high-end CPUs to power your workloads. All of this is built-in to the Koyeb platform, without any management of code modification from you.

Learn more about the benefits of Firecracker (opens in a new tab) and how the technology works (opens in a new tab).

According to a The New Stack article (opens in a new tab), Render uses Go, Docker, and Kubernetes and runs on AWS and GCP. We initially started building the Koyeb platform with Kubernetes, but later switched to a custom stack based on Nomad, Firecracker, and Kuma. If you want to learn more about these technologies and our decision to switch, check out The Koyeb Serverless Engine: from Kubernetes to Nomad, Firecracker, and Kuma (opens in a new tab).

Fast connections and load-balancing: Fast connections on Koyeb are supported by modern protocols like HTTP/2, WebSocket, and gRPC. On Koyeb, all requests to your apps are served over HTTP/2 to reduce web page load latency. HTTP/2 allows to send multiple streams of data at once and reduces the number of simultaneous connections.

High availability architectures: On Koyeb, you can easily deploy your applications to multiple core locations to build an app resistant to regional failures. On Render, to achieve multi-region resiliency, you need to create a service for each location and to configure an external global load balancer service such as Fastly or Cloudflare. On Koyeb, you only need to create one service and select the regions where you want your app to run. Traffic is automatically routed to the nearest functional core location.

Global edge network: The Koyeb Global Edge Network allows you to deliver your content faster and close to your user thanks to our 250+ edge locations, with zero configuration. While Render's CDN is only available for static sites, Koyeb's built-in CDN is available for all web apps and services, static and dynamic sites, APIs, and more.

Customer focus

All Koyeb users can join the Koyeb community (opens in a new tab) to talk directly with other users and the Koyeb team.

Koyeb offers a 99.9% uptime SLA with its startup plan and a 24x7x365 support with its Enterprise plan. Render has no customer service solutions or SLA included in its offerings from what we found.

Pricing

Koyeb's pricing model is linear according to resource use whereas Render's starting costs are segmented by project type and determined by usage afterward. The first table we prepared compares the free-tiers offered by Koyeb and Render. The tables that fallow compare running similar-sized service projects running on Koyeb and Render.

The key differences between these offerings are:

• At the free tier, you can host any type of project you want with Koyeb, be it a web app or service, a static or dynamic site, or an API. In comparison, you can only host static websites on Render's free tier.
• Across the board of Service sizes, Koyeb offers more computing resources, namely CPU and SSD disk, at a more affordable price.
• Outbound bandwidth costs $0.04 per GB with Koyeb while with Render it costs $0.10 per GB. Both Koyeb and Render offer you 100 GB free egress bandwidth per month.

Free Tier Comparison

On Koyeb, you can deploy web apps and services, APIs, and static or dynamic sites on its free tier. This allows you to create a Service with 256MB of RAM, 0.1 vCPU, and 2.5GB of SSD.

Deploy a Small Project

Koyeb provides clear ephemeral SSD Disk size in all its offerings whereas Render doesn't give this information.

Regarding feature availability, Render's CDN is only available for the static sites deployed on Render. On the other hand, Koyeb's CDN is available for all types of services deployed on Koyeb.

In terms of the service mesh and private network, services deployed in one region on Render cannot communicate with services deployed in another region. Koyeb's built-in service mesh allows services to communicate between different regions.

Deploy a Large Service

For very large services, Render's prices become much steeper. At less than half the price of Render, Koyeb offers 4 extra CPUs and 80 GB SSD disk.

Koyeb offers a built-in service mesh with its private network meaning Services deployed on Koyeb can communicate with one another between different regions. Render's private network does not provide this feature, meaning services deployed in one region on Render cannot communicate with services deployed in another region.

Also, Koyeb provides a CDN with 250+ edge locations built-in to the platform. Render also offers a CDN, but it is limited to static sites. Koyeb's CDN is available for all web apps and services.

Conclusion

Both Koyeb and Render are cloud platforms providing a powerful layer of abstraction that suits many startup applications. We hope this comparison helps clarify the key differences between these platforms.

We built Koyeb to provide developers the fastest way to deploy apps globally. The built-in features we provide aim to create a true serverless experience that power your apps and speed up the time between a feature idea and its reality.

Join us over on our community platform (opens in a new tab) to let us know if you think something is missing in this comparison or if you think there is an error in our side of the story!