I use Hetzner - reasonable prices, EU based and one of the best benefits of AI is that running a pet server is no longer a real burden.

Colocation.

I'm building thebay.cloud, so I'm biased - asking cause I want to hear what people actually use

Cloudflare. Free tier, and prices bound to wall time, which is nice for side projects.

Back in the day I used an old laptop sitting in my house running with its lid closed and free dynamic-DNS :)

Used Heroku until they got rid of free

Used Vercel until they banned img tags

Used AWS until they suspended my account (they always do this, new account -> week later suspended, can’t pay them, they don’t want me)

Used GCP until I got the first bill

Every option was a headache, so now I just self host. Forward router ports, install an SSL, npm start

Problem solved. For free

I think it's really worth considering self-hosting these days. Doesn't take much of a machine to run a web app, for instance.

I do a little of that, but for anything public I put it on a VPS.

I use one of the big providers; they're all the same. Empty linux virtual machine with an IP. That's all you need. They start at $4/month or so, maybe cheaper if you shop around.