Top Python Hosting Platforms
Eli Mernit
If you’ve developed a Python app, you’ll usually need to host it on the cloud. Traditionally, cloud hosting is a manual process that involves setting up a server, DNS, a database, logging, CI/CD, and more.
Fortunately, there are a number of hosting platforms that handle this heavy-lifting and make it easy to run Python on the cloud.
Top 5 Python Hosting Platforms
Each platform in this article is accessible for developers and hobbyists, quick to get started, and offer affordable pay-as-you-go pricing.
Beam
Beam is a serverless platform for Python. Developers add simple decorators to their code, and Beam automatically runs the code on servers in the cloud. It provides support for web endpoints, task queues, realtime websockets, scheduled jobs, and one-off functions.
Here's an example of deploying a scheduled cron job to the cloud. A simple decorator is added to the function that will be scheduled:
This code will be deployed by running a single command:
In addition to Python scripts, Beam supports ASGI apps like FastAPI. Users can also setup Git deployment flows to automatically deploy their apps in CI/CD pipelines.
PythonAnywhere
PythonAnywhere offers an online portal where users can upload their Python apps in order to have them hosted on servers in the cloud.
It’s a popular option for hosting Django or Flask apps. The deployment process involves logging into the dashboard and pointing to the entry point of your project.
It offers support for popular ASGI frameworks:
It's important to note that PythonAnywhere is somewhat limited to simple web apps. It does not include support for Celery, so it's not designed for running task queues or other apps that require task management.
This said, PythonAnywhere also includes MySQL and Postgres databases which can be attached to hosted apps.
It also includes a rich list of templates which can easily be deployed in a few clicks.
Render
Render is a modern cloud hosting service that supports hosting ASGI Python apps. Similar to PythonAnywhere, Render providers a UI-focused workflow. Developers login to the Render web dashboard to upload their apps to the cloud.
To use Render, users build their ASGI apps normally and define the entry point to their functions.
Here's an example Flask app hosted on Render.
Once deployed, the apps can be invoked using a custom subdomain on Render: https://{your-app}.onrender.com
Render also offers support for cron jobs, databases, and static websites, although many of these use cases go beyond the scope of Python specifically.
Fly.io
Fly.io is a hosting service for many frameworks, including Python. Unlike the other providers, Fly specializes in hosting applications geographically close to the users sending requests. This makes Fly an excellent choice for users looking for low latency.
Fly also offers a smooth developer experience for deploying. Unlike other platforms, users can deploy their apps to the cloud without having to login to the web UI.
It’s worth noting that Fly requires users to Dockerize their apps to deploy them. For users with Dockerized Python apps looking for a CLI-focused developer experience, ASGI support, and low-latency, Fly is a great option.
Koyeb
Koyeb allows users to deploy ASGI and Flask apps to their cloud. They also offer a Git-focused workflow, allowing users to automatically deploy Python apps pushed to a Github repository.
Like Fly, developers can also deploy pre-built containers with their Python web apps to Koyeb.
