Tools/withastro/astro

Astro

The web framework for content-driven websites

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The Lens

By Erik Loyd, SaaS CEO and former COO/CFO of an AWS Premier Partner.

Updated Aug 2026

Astro ships zero JavaScript by default, which is the right trade for content sites: blogs, docs, marketing pages, portfolios. It renders to static HTML and only sends JS for the components that actually need to be interactive. All of it is MIT licensed, and the company behind Astro sells nothing at all. The project runs on sponsorships from Netlify, Cloudflare, and Webflow.

Hosting is your only cost. A static build deploys free on Cloudflare Pages or GitHub Pages; server output needs a Node host or an edge adapter. Astro 7 landed in June 2026 with the compiler rewritten in Rust and Vite 8 underneath, cutting build times 15 to 61 percent on real sites.

Solo builders and small teams get the best free content stack going. Medium and large teams should use Astro for docs and marketing and leave the product app to vercel/next.js. For something simpler and file-based, 11ty/eleventy and gohugoio/hugo are still excellent.

The catch: Astro DB is gone. It was deprecated in 6.4 and removed in 7.0, and the npm package now tells you to use Drizzle or Kysely directly. Anyone who built on the old Astro Studio has already eaten one migration. Bring your own database, and ignore any tutorial that says otherwise.

Free vs Self-Hosted vs Paid

fully free

Free

The entire framework, MIT licensed. Content collections, MDX, image optimization, islands, server islands, sessions, actions, route caching, adapters. There is no paid edition and no feature gate. Astro is funded by sponsors (Netlify, Cloudflare, Webflow, Mux) and OpenCollective donations.

Paid

Nothing to buy. The company sold a hosted database product, Astro Studio, and shut it down: no new databases after 1 October 2024, existing ones deleted 1 March 2025. The @astrojs/db integration that went with it was deprecated in Astro 6.4 and removed in Astro 7.0, and the npm package is now marked deprecated with the message to use a database client such as Drizzle or Kysely directly.

Self-Hosted Costs

Static output: $0 on Cloudflare Pages, GitHub Pages, or Netlify free tiers. Server output: a Node host or serverless adapter, so $0 on a Vercel or Netlify hobby plan, or $5 to $20/mo on a VPS. Database, if you need one, is your own choice and your own bill (Neon, Turso, and Supabase all have free tiers).

When to Pay

Never, for Astro itself. You pay for hosting and for whatever database you bring. Compared to vercel/next.js, Astro produces smaller and faster pages for content and is the wrong tool for a highly interactive dashboard. The real cost of choosing wrong is building half an app before you notice the mismatch.

Free and MIT with no commercial edition. You pay only for hosting. Astro DB and Astro Studio are dead, so bring your own database.

What to do by team size

Solo: free; a static build hosts for nothing on Cloudflare Pages or GitHub Pages
Small team: free; ideal for the marketing site and docs sitting next to your app
Medium team: free; use it for content properties and leave the product app to Next.js
Large team: free; docs and marketing at zero license cost and no vendor to negotiate with

Self-hosting ops:trivial

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