Host a website on IPFS, free
You can host a website on IPFS free by dragging its folder onto Stasho’s drop zone: the files are hashed into a CID, pinned on Aleph Cloud’s storage network, and served at a live HTTPS URL — no account, no pinning service to configure, no node to run. The drop is claimable for 4 hours; claiming is free and keeps the site up as a real project.
How it works
- Drag your site’s folder onto the drop zone. Plain HTML/CSS/JS or any framework’s build output.
- You get two things: a live gateway URL (share it immediately) and a CID — the content-addressed fingerprint of your exact files.
- Claim it, free. The claimed project stays up, supports custom domains, and redeploys by drag-and-drop or a connected GitHub repo.
The honest part most tutorials skip
“Free IPFS hosting” guides tend to gloss over one mechanic: IPFS keeps content addressable forever, but only pinned content stays retrievable. A CID is a permanent name, not a permanent promise of storage — if nobody pins the bytes, they eventually become unreachable. Many older tutorials recommend pinning services that have since pivoted or shut down, which is exactly this mechanic playing out. So here is Stasho’s version, stated precisely: while your claimed project is active we pin it; anonymous unclaimed drops are claimable for 4 hours and eventually unpinned; and because the CID is yours, you can add a second pin anywhere else at any time — including your own node — at which point your site’s availability no longer depends on us at all.
What “free” includes
- Anonymous drop: live URL + CID, no account, claimable for 4 hours, capped at 10 drops per hour and 20 per day per IP (IPv6 is counted per /64 prefix, so addresses on one network share the allowance).
- Claimed free project: the site stays pinned and live, redeploys included.
- No ads on your site, no banner injected into your pages.
Limits, stated plainly
- Static sites only — no server-side code runs at request time.
- Cold fetches of brand-new content can be slower than a CDN; cached pages are comparable to conventional static hosts.
- Anonymous drops publish your folder as-is; framework build steps run for signed-in projects.
FAQ
Is IPFS slow? Raw peer-to-peer retrieval can be slower than a CDN. That’s why your site is served through a gateway with caching — page loads are comparable to conventional static hosts for typical sites. The content-addressed layer is about portability and integrity, not about routing every request through a peer swarm.
Who actually stores my site? While your project is active, we pin it on Aleph Cloud’s storage network. The pin is verifiable — the CID either resolves or it doesn’t. Because pinning is commodity infrastructure, our pin is replaceable by any other pin of the same CID — including one you run yourself.
Can I use my own domain? Yes — add your domain and create the short list of DNS records we show you. Your domain then serves the site over HTTPS, and every redeploy follows the domain automatically.