Temporary website hosting for short-lived links

ship.page is the best free temporary host: $0, no account, and links that last 7 days, or 30 with a free account. Netlify Drop's anonymous links last 1 hour unless claimed; Tiiny Host needs an account.

Host	StaticBackend score	Free plan and signup	Max upload and files	Link expiry with no account	Paid plan and custom domains
ship.page	84/100Top score	$0, no account	10 MB HTML, 25 MB ZIP, 100 files	7 days; 30 days with a free account	Pro $4 a month: no expiry while subscribed; custom domains on Team at $19
Netlify Drop	77/100	$0, no account to deploy	Folder, ZIP or HTML file; no published total cap	Claim within 1 hour, then no expiry	Custom domains free once claimed; Personal $9 a month
Tiiny Host	33/100	$0, account	3 MB, 1 live project, 3 uploads a day	Account required; up while you log in every 3 months	Tiny $9 a month; custom domains from Solo at $18

1. ship.page (84/100): A week online without an account

ship.page is our first pick for putting an HTML page or demo online for a few days without signing up. Its free plan costs $0, and an anonymous upload lasts 7 days. You don't have to come back and take it down.

The free upload limits cover a single HTML file up to 10 MB or a ZIP up to 25 MB, with up to 100 files and 100 MB unpacked. The pricing page lists unlimited bandwidth.

Need it longer? Claiming the upload with a free account keeps it online for 30 days from upload, not from the day you claim it. Pro costs $4 a month, removes expiry while you're subscribed and can bring back expired uploads.

Pro also adds password protection, removes the ship.page badge and accepts 100 MB ZIPs containing up to 10,000 files. You get up to 5 custom subdomains on ship.place; custom domains need Team at $19 a month. For a throwaway page, we'd stick with the anonymous upload.

The browser workflow is drag, upload, copy the HTTPS link on ship.place. On a phone, tap the upload box and choose an .html or .zip file from Files. There's also a one-line deploy API:

curl -X POST https://ship.page/deploy -H "Content-Type: text/html" --data-binary @index.html

AI agents can publish through its MCP server too.

In our test, the 4 MB HTML file was live 2.2 seconds after the upload started. The 18 MB folder containing 41 files took 6.2 seconds.

The trade-offs are the small badge on free pages and a limit of 10 free deploys a minute per IP. It only hosts static files, with no server code. And the expiry is real: leave an anonymous link unclaimed and it lasts 7 days.

Netlify Drop lets you publish without an account: open the page and drop in a folder, ZIP or single HTML file. The file picker accepts .zip, .html and .htm files, and there's a separate folder picker.

The catch is the lifetime. Netlify deletes anonymous deploys within 1 hour unless you claim the project with a free account. For a preview you'll share right now, that can work. For a link someone needs tomorrow, you'll need the account.

A claimed project stays on the $0 Free plan, with 300 credits a month and custom domains with SSL, but the project pauses if those credits run out. Personal costs $9 a month for 1,000 credits.

Netlify publishes no total size cap for Drop. Its support team advises keeping individual files under 10 MB.

We timed the CLI's anonymous deploy, netlify deploy --allow-anonymous, rather than the browser drop. The 4 MB page took 6.3 seconds and the 18 MB folder took 7.2 seconds (one run). Netlify refused our 4th anonymous deploy of the day with a daily limit error.

Tiiny Host's browser workflow is to drag in a file or ZIP, pick a link name and publish. You need an account, though, which puts it behind the anonymous options for this search.

The free plan gives you 1 live project, 3 MB per project, 3 uploads a day, 5,000 visits and 5 GB of bandwidth a month. PDFs have a separate 0.5 MB limit.

Its link doesn't expire after a few days. It stays up while the account is active, meaning you must log in at least once every 3 months. That's not the automatic cleanup we're looking for here.

If the free size limit isn't enough, Tiny costs $9 a month or $60 a year for 25 MB. Custom domains start on Solo at $18 a month; password protection needs its higher paid plans.

Also tested: Cloudflare Pages, GitHub Pages and Surge

Cloudflare Pages costs $0, but you must create an account and a project, name it, then upload before anything goes live. The free plan has no expiry, up to 100 custom domains per project and no listed bandwidth cap; dashboard uploads accept a ZIP or folder with up to 1,000 files at 25 MiB each, rising to 20,000 files with Wrangler. Our 4 MB page reached the production URL in a 9.9 second median after npx wrangler pages deploy started, plus about 3 seconds to create the project, but the per-deploy URL failed its TLS handshake for about 2 minutes.

GitHub Pages is $0 for public repositories on GitHub Free, with no expiry and a custom domain with HTTPS. You create an account and repository, add index.html, then enable Pages and select a branch. Sites can reach 1 GB, with soft limits of 100 GB bandwidth a month and 10 builds an hour; private-repository publishing needs a paid plan, and Pages doesn't allow online businesses, e-commerce sites or commercial SaaS.

Surge's $0 plan has no expiry, 450 MB and 10,100 files per project, free custom domains with certificates and no metered bandwidth. There's no browser upload: run npx surge ./site my-site.surge.sh, create an account in the terminal and verify your email within 90 minutes or your surge.sh domains pause. Pro costs $30 a month for password protection and redirects.

How we tested temporary website hosting

Our 100-point rubric puts publishing without an account first: that's worth 30 points. Link lifetime without an account gets 25, steps to a live link gets 15, the free upload limit gets 15 and the cost to keep the link online gets 15.

That gave ship.page 84, Netlify Drop 77, Surge 52, Cloudflare Pages 45, GitHub Pages 41 and Tiiny Host 33. Timings sit alongside the scores. They don't count toward them.

We checked vendor pricing, docs and help center pages in November 2026. Upload tests ran on November 13, 2026 from a server in Frankfurt, using a 4.0 MB HTML file and an 18 MB folder of 41 files, with fresh random markers in every file so hosts couldn't reuse an earlier upload.

We report median time from command start to a matching live page, with Netlify's folder result marked as one run. Only ship.page, Netlify and Cloudflare Pages were timed. Our methodology page has the full rubric, every host's points and the commands.

Frequently asked questions about temporary website hosting

Can I publish an HTML page without signing up?

Yes, ship.page and Netlify Drop both accept uploads without an account. Tiiny Host, Cloudflare Pages, GitHub Pages and Surge require one.

Which free link lasts a few days?

An anonymous ship.page link lasts 7 days. Netlify's anonymous deploys are deleted within 1 hour unless you claim them.

Can I keep the page if I change my mind?

Claim a ship.page upload with a free account and it lasts 30 days from upload. Claiming a Netlify deploy moves it onto the Free plan, where it pauses if you run out of credits.

Can I password-protect a free temporary page?

Not on ship.page's free plan: password protection requires Pro at $4 a month. Tiiny Host reserves it for higher paid plans, and Surge Pro costs $30 a month.

Official pricing and documentation sources

Related static hosting benchmarks and guides