Shipcel vs Netlify
Netlify’s 300 free credits buy about 15 GB of bandwidth, around 7,500 views of a 2 MB page, and then every project pauses until next month; Cloudflare serves files without limit. A personal site that fits Cloudflare’s free plan needs Netlify’s $9 plan, and a busy app that costs about $5.60 on Workers Paid costs about $290 in Netlify credits.
The short answer
What you pay a month
| Shipcel + Cloudflare | Netlify |
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| A personal site: 20,000 page views a month, 4 deploys | $0. Static files are free and unlimited, and deploys cost nothing. | $9. About 920 credits: 40 GB of bandwidth at 20 credits a GB, 300,000 requests, and 15 credits a deploy. Free’s 300 credits run out at about 7,500 page views, so the Personal plan (1,000 credits). |
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| A small business site: 50,000 page views, 150,000 API calls, 10 deploys | $0. Files are free; 150,000 Worker requests are 5,000 a day, inside the free 100,000. | $20. About 2,300 credits, 2,000 of them for 100 GB of bandwidth: the Pro plan’s 3,000. |
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| A busy app: 1 million page views, 8 million requests for pages and files, 2 TB of transfer, 3 million API calls, 30 deploys | $5.60. Workers Paid $5 (10 million requests and 30 million CPU-milliseconds included) plus 30 million more CPU-milliseconds at $0.02 a million; no charge for transfer. | About $290. About 43,000 credits, 40,000 of them for 2 TB of bandwidth: Pro’s 3,000 plus 27 packs of 1,500 credits at $10. With auto recharge off, the default, every project pauses instead. |
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| Add a 2 GB SQL database to any of these | +$0 to $5. Workers Paid, if you don’t pay it already: D1 is included, with 5 GB. | +$0. Netlify Database: 3 databases of 5 GB on Free. |
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How far the free plan goes
| Shipcel + Cloudflare free plans | Netlify Free |
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| Page views a month, at 2 MB a page | No limit: static files are free and unlimited | About 7,500: 300 credits buy 15 GB at 20 credits a GB, if they buy nothing else |
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| Production deploys | Free, with 3,000 build minutes a month | 15 credits each: 20 deploys spend every credit |
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| Server and API requests | 100,000 a day, about 3 million a month | 2 credits per 10,000 web requests, and compute at 10 credits per GB-hour, from the same 300 |
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| When you run out | Server requests fail until midnight UTC; files keep serving; nothing is billed | Every project on the team pauses until the next cycle; Free can’t buy credits |
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Assumptions: 2 MB a page view (the page, scripts, styles and images), about 10 requests a view, functions at 1 GB of memory for 0.1 s a call, 20 ms of CPU per API call on Cloudflare, US dollars before tax. Netlify’s pricing page (credits per GB, per 10,000 requests, per deploy and per GB-hour, and its credit packs) and Cloudflare’s Workers pricing page were read on 28 October 2026.
Which one fits
Netlify bills everything in credits: production deploys, compute, bandwidth and web requests all draw on one monthly balance. Shipcel deploys to your Cloudflare account, where static files are never metered and the free plan resets daily instead of running down over the month.
Choose Shipcel if
- You serve meaningful traffic for free: 300 Netlify credits cover at most 15 GB of bandwidth (20 credits per GB) or 1.5 million web requests, and then every project on the team pauses until next month.
- You deploy often: each Netlify production deploy costs 15 credits; deploys cost nothing on Cloudflare (you get 3,000 build minutes a month).
- You want SQL, file storage and key-value data from the same account: D1, R2 and KV are included in Cloudflare’s plans.
- You need containers: Netlify doesn’t run long-lived servers or containers; Cloudflare Containers run on Workers Paid.
Choose Netlify if
- You want built-in form handling (unlimited and free on credit plans) without wiring it yourself.
- You want a separate database branch for each deploy preview (20 on Free). Shipcel’s previews share one staging copy of your data.
- You want managed Postgres: Netlify Database, generally available since April 2026, with 3 databases of 5 GB on Free.
- You want AI agents that run on the platform itself: Netlify’s Agent Runners work from its dashboard, with model usage billed in credits. Shipcel works with the agent on your own computer.
- You need a proven service today. Shipcel is in alpha.
Side by side
Free plans
| Shipcel + Cloudflare free plans | Netlify Free |
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| Price | $0 | $0 |
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| How usage is counted | Daily limits per service, reset at midnight UTC | 300 credits a month shared by deploys, compute, bandwidth and requests |
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| Bandwidth | No per-gigabyte charge; static files free and unlimited | 20 credits per GB (about 15 GB if credits buy nothing else) |
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| Requests | 100,000 Worker requests a day; static files unlimited | 2 credits per 10,000 web requests |
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| Production deploys | Free; 3,000 build minutes a month | 15 credits each |
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| When you run out | Requests fail until midnight UTC; nothing is billed | Every project on the team is paused until the next cycle; Free can’t buy credits |
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| Members | Personal workspace | One member |
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Paid plans
| Shipcel + Cloudflare Workers Paid | Netlify Pro |
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| Price | $5 a month per account | From $20 a month for 3,000 credits, unlimited members |
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| Extra usage | Published per-unit rates; no bandwidth charges for static files or R2 | 1,500 credits for $10, about $0.133 per GB of bandwidth |
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| When you run out | Nothing stops; usage beyond the included amounts is billed | Projects pause at zero credits unless auto recharge is on (off by default) |
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Features
| Shipcel | Netlify |
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| Deploy from GitHub | Yes, with GitHub Actions in your repository; no deploy credits | Yes; 15 credits per production deploy |
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| Pull request previews | Cloudflare Worker Previews (beta), with the address commented on the pull request; previews share one staging copy of your data | Deploy Previews, unmetered, each with its own database branch |
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| Drag and drop | Into your own Cloudflare account; new apps stay unpublished until you publish | Netlify Drop; drops made without signing in are password-protected until claimed |
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| Command line | shipcel: signs in, builds on your computer and deploys | Netlify CLI |
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| AI agents | Your own AI agent (Claude Code, Codex, Cursor and others) through Shipcel’s MCP server; Shipcel runs no model and charges nothing for it | Agent Runners in the dashboard; model usage is billed at 180 credits per $1 |
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| Rollback | One click to any earlier version | Publish any earlier deploy; Free keeps deploys for 30 days |
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| Split testing | Two versions can share traffic by percentage | Can’t be added to new projects since August 2026 |
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| Forms | Not built in | Netlify Forms, free and unlimited |
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| Sign-in for your users | Built in: passkeys, GitHub, Google and email, as standard OpenID Connect | Netlify Identity: email, GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket and Google; its 2025 deprecation was reversed in February 2026 |
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| SQL database | D1 (SQLite) in your account | Netlify Database (serverless Postgres, generally available since April 2026): 3 databases of 5 GB on Free |
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| Realtime | Channels with presence and broadcast on Durable Objects | Not built in |
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| Teams | Shared workspaces with owner, developer and viewer roles, free | Free is the Team Owner only; Pro adds unlimited members |
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| Where it runs | Your Cloudflare account | Netlify’s platform |
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Billing and surprise-bill protection
- Netlify Free is never billed: when credits run out, projects pause.
- Paid Netlify plans pause at zero credits unless auto recharge is turned on, so with auto recharge off the plan price is effectively a cap.
- Cloudflare’s free plan is never billed for Workers, D1 or KV: over a daily limit, requests and queries fail until midnight UTC. R2 file storage bills usage beyond its free tier (never egress).
- Workers Paid ($5 a month per account) has no hard spending cap. Budget alerts email you when usage passes an amount ($10 by default) but don’t stop anything; per-Worker CPU and subrequest limits can stop runaway code. Shipcel’s budget guard alerts over each app’s budget ($0 by default) and can pause the app, minutes after the budget is crossed.
Moving from Netlify
- Static sites move as they are: commit a Wrangler configuration that points at your build output.
- Netlify Functions become Worker routes. Scheduled functions become a
scheduled() handler run by Cron Triggers, listed in your Wrangler configuration or set in Manage → Schedules. - Forms need a replacement service or library. For user sign-in, turn on Manage → Sign-in & realtime.