AWS Lightsail vs Render

AWS Lightsail is strongest for AWS ecosystem users. Render is strongest for developers. Here's how they stack up on price, uptime, and support.

Feature	AWS Lightsail	Render
Starting price	$0.8/mo	$0.25/mo
Best for	AWS ecosystem users Predictable bundled pricing Windows workloads	Developers Startups Full-stack web apps APIs Small teams replacing Heroku
Stated uptime SLA	99.9%	99.95%
Storage	SSD	SSD
Regions	16	4
Managed Kubernetes	No	No
Support channels	AWS Support plans (separate from Lightsail), Community forums, Docs	Ticket, Docs, Community forum, Priority support on Pro/Scale/Enterprise
Compliance	SOC 2, GDPR, HIPAA eligible	SOC 2
Hidden costs to watch for	Data transfer overage varies significantly by AWS region ($0.09-$0.132/GB) Windows bundles cost 70-90% more than equivalent Linux bundles	Persistent disk storage billed separately at $0.25/GB/month Bandwidth overage billed per-GB beyond workspace plan allowance (best-available figure ~$0.15/GB, exact current rate not printed on fetched docs page) Additional custom domains beyond plan allowance billed at $0.25/month each Postgres storage overage billed at roughly $0.30/GB/month beyond included storage Instances billed by the second while running, so scale-to-zero / suspended services still show partial-month charges for the time they were up
Last reviewed	2026-07-17	2026-07-18