VibeHost vs Replit: where to host a Replit app after you build it

You built something in Replit and it works. Now you want it to keep working on a URL you understand, with a bill you can predict, shown to people who do not have Replit accounts.

Replit is a build environment that also publishes. VibeHost only hosts. That difference explains most of what follows, in both directions.

What Replit documents about publishing

Replit separates publishing into four kinds. From Replit's deployments documentation:

"Replit offers the following deployment types: Autoscale Deployment, Static Deployment, Reserved VM Deployment, Scheduled Deployment."

The one that matches a built front-end is Static. From Replit's Static Deployments guide:

"Static Deployments host your app's files, such as HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, on a cloud server"

The same page carries a constraint worth reading before you plan on it:

"Static Deployments are not compatible with Replit Apps created using Agent"

So the app the Agent built for you is not, by Replit's own documentation, a Static Deployment candidate. It publishes as one of the compute types instead, and the compute types are where the bill comes from.

What the compute types cost

From Replit's publishing costs page, Autoscale is metered on three axes: a base fee of "$2" per month, "$0.60" per million compute units, and "$0.40" per million requests. The same page describes the idle behaviour:

"Pay only when your app serves requests—nothing when idle"

Reserved VM is a flat monthly rate per size — "$15.00" for a shared 0.5 vCPU / 2 GB instance, "$35.00" for a dedicated 1 vCPU / 4 GB, "$50.00" for 2 vCPU / 8 GB, and "$130.00" for 4 vCPU / 16 GB. Scheduled Deployments carry a "$2.00" base fee plus the same "$0.60" per million compute units.

Static Deployments are the cheap outlier: hosting is included and data transfer is billed at "$0.05" per GB.

All of it draws down the same pool. From the same page:

"All publishing costs are deducted from your monthly credits. You only pay usage-based fees after your monthly credits are fully used."

That is the sentence to sit with. The subscription is not a hosting price; it is a credit balance that both agent work and hosting spend from. Replit's pricing page lists Starter as free with the ability to "Publish 1 live project", Core at "$20 $17 / month, billed annually" with "$20 towards most powerful models", and Pro at "$100 $95 / month, billed annually" with "$100 towards most powerful models". Core also includes the option to "Remove 'Made with Replit' badge."

So a month where you iterate hard with the agent is a month where hosting competes for the same credits.

What changes when the artifact moves

VibeHost has no agent, and a static app has no build step. You deploy a directory that already contains index.html. (nextjs and node apps do get compiled, in a sandboxed Builder Job on the server rather than on your machine.) The CLI packs it into a .tar.gz, POSTs it, and the server validates, deduplicates blobs, and assembles a release. VibeHost's own architecture documentation puts the end-to-end at roughly three to eight seconds from tarball POST to a healthy URL.

The unit of preview is a channel, not a branch and not an environment: production, pr-42, dark-mode. The server holds no git knowledge at all, which is why moving an artifact out of a build environment does not require reconstructing a repository first.

The bill does not move with usage in the same way. Free is $0 for 100 apps, 5 GB of storage, 10 GB of monthly bandwidth, and 3 members. Business is $20 per month per workspace, not per app and not per member, for unlimited apps, 500 GB of storage, 1 TB of monthly bandwidth, 20 custom domains, and unlimited members. Both plans are tabulated under plan numbers below and on the limits page.

For the step-by-step move — what your Replit app maps to, what to build locally, what to point your domain at — see move from Replit to VibeHost.

Who can open it

This is the part that usually decides the move. A Replit-published app is served from a URL; Replit's deployment documentation does not describe a per-app private mode or a shared-password gate for published apps, so the access model is not something this page will characterise beyond that.

VibeHost's model is explicit and enforced at the edge on every request. Apps start private. A private app admits a visitor by exactly one of three paths:

• Share link — a minted URL whose holder needs no account and no sign-in. The plaintext token is shown once at creation; the server stores a hash and a display prefix. Optional expiry from 1 to 90 days, or none. Revocation applies to the visitor's next request, because the gate re-reads revocation state from the database instead of trusting the cookie it issued.
• Email or team grant — one address gets viewer, deployer, or admin on one app. An email grant is matched on the account's email with no workspace-membership condition, so a client does not become a workspace member and does not affect the bill. A grant on an unregistered address waits and activates on that person's first sign-in.
• Workspace visibility — workspace admits any signed-in member of the owning workspace.

Password protection is a Business feature and a separate gate rather than a fourth entrance. It composes with the others: clearing the password does not grant read on its own. A signed-in visitor with no grant who types the correct password gets the password page cleared and then a 403 page offering to request access.

Side-by-side comparison

VibeHost plan-dependent figures appear inline below so the rows read side by side. The authoritative per-plan table is on the limits page, generated from the same object the API enforces.

Plan numbers

Over the storage cap, deploys return 402 — free up space or upgrade. Usage-based overage billing is not live yet, so going over is never a charge today. Bandwidth is metered and shown on the usage card, but nothing is blocked when you go over it.

When to stay on Replit

Stay if the app needs a running server: a database connection, a queue, a websocket that stays open, a cron job. VibeHost does not host any of those. Replit's Reserved VM and Autoscale types exist precisely for that shape of app, and moving a stateful app to a static host is not a migration, it is a rewrite.

Stay if the build loop is the product. If you are still generating and regenerating with the agent every day, keeping the artifact next to the thing that produces it is fewer moving parts.

Stay if one live project is enough. Starter publishes one, free, and you do not need a second platform for that.

When to move the artifact out

Move when the app is finished and static. A built front-end that does not need server code at runtime is paying for compute it does not use.

Move when the hosting bill needs to stop competing with the agent budget. Hosting drawn from the same credits as model usage means a heavy building month and a heavy traffic month cost the same pool.

Move when the audience is external and account-free. A client, a designer, a stakeholder reviewing one build should not have to create an account. Share links exist for that, and they revoke.

Move when you need more than a handful of live URLs. Free carries 100 apps; Business is unlimited and priced per workspace.

What VibeHost does not do

No build. npm run build runs on your machine, or on your agent's. The server validates and assembles the artifact and nothing else.

No server-side runtime, generally. Static is the only generally available runtime; a server-rendered runtime for Next.js apps with API routes and middleware is in private beta.

No password protection on Free. Visibility, grants, and share links are all available there; the shared-password gate is Business only.

No custom domains on Free. Free apps live on *.vibehost.space with a watermark on the link preview card.

Sources

Every Replit quote on this page comes from Replit's own documentation and pricing page:

• Replit — About deployments
• Replit — Static Deployments
• Replit — Deployment pricing
• Replit — Pricing

See also

• Move from Replit to VibeHost — the migration walkthrough, app shape by app shape
• All six platforms compared — the same access questions across five other hosts
• Concepts — workspaces, apps, channels, grants, and why the server holds no git state
• Limits — per-plan caps, generated from what the API enforces
• Share private deploys — the private-app-plus-share-link pattern end to end