Free Hosting Options
Crow can be deployed for free on several platforms. Here's how they compare:
Comparison
| Option | Compute | RAM | Storage | Always On? | External DB? | Best For |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Oracle Cloud | 1 OCPU (x86) | 1 GB | 47 GB | Yes | No (local SQLite) | Permanent free cloud server |
| Google Cloud | e2-micro (0.25 vCPU) | 1 GB | 30 GB | Yes | No (local SQLite) | Secondary/satellite instance |
| Home Server | Varies | 4-32 GB | Unlimited | Yes | No (local SQLite) | Full control, all add-ons |
| Desktop Install | Your PC | Your PC | Your PC | While running | No (local SQLite) | Quick start, single machine |
| Render (legacy) | Shared | 512 MB | Ephemeral | No (sleeps) | N/A | Not recommended |
Oracle Cloud Free Tier (Recommended)
Oracle's Always Free tier includes a VM.Standard.E2.1.Micro instance — 1 OCPU and 1 GB RAM. It never sleeps, never expires, and uses local SQLite directly on disk (no external database needed).
Home Server
Run Crow on a Raspberry Pi, old laptop, or any always-on Linux machine. One-command install, full control over your hardware and data.
For Raspberry Pi-specific details (flashing, mDNS, hardware table), see the Raspberry Pi Guide.
Desktop Install
Run everything locally on your personal computer. Connects directly to Claude Desktop, Claude Code, Cursor, and more. No cloud needed, but only works on that machine.
Which Should I Choose?
- Want a permanent free server? → Oracle Cloud. Never sleeps, local SQLite, 47 GB disk.
- Have a Raspberry Pi or old laptop? → Home Server. Full control, all add-ons supported.
- Just want to try Crow? → Desktop Install. Clone, setup, connect — done in 5 minutes.
Our recommendation: Start with Oracle Cloud as your primary instance — it has more RAM and is reliably available. Then add Google Cloud as a satellite and chain them together for redundancy and federation. Two always-free clouds, synced automatically.
Legacy: Render (Archived)
The Render + Turso deployment path is no longer supported. Turso cloud database support has been removed from Crow — multi-device sync is now handled by Hypercore P2P replication with local SQLite.
See the Cloud Deploy (Legacy) guide for historical reference.