Where the two differ on getting to a live link, on what each one publishes as a limit, and on what the terms let you put there.
Figures last verified 5 September 2026
GitHub Pages is a good static host and its ceilings are higher than ours. What it asks for first is an account, a repository and a commit, and then a build that has ten minutes to finish. NudgeHost asks for a file, takes up to 25MB of it before you have signed up for anything, and answers with the address straight away.
and a browser, with no account needed to start
step at all, so the address answers as soon as the bytes land
at once signed out, each running for 7 days
a repository, and a commit before anything is live
is where a deployment times out
per account, for a user or organisation site
Their ceilings are higher than ours and this page does not pretend otherwise.
a file on the free plan, rising to 1GB on Studio
for a published site, with the same figure recommended for the source repository
| Theme | NudgeHost | GitHub Pages | Winner |
|---|---|---|---|
| What you need before you start | A file and a browser | An account, a repository and a commit | NudgeHost |
| Publishing without an account | Yes, up to 25MB | No, an account and a repository first | NudgeHost |
| Published size ceiling | 25MB free, 1GB on Studio | 1 GB for a published site | GitHub Pages |
| Source repository ceiling | No repository involved | 1 GB recommended | GitHub Pages |
| Build step | None, the address answers when the bytes land | Jekyll or an Actions workflow, timing out at 10 minutes | NudgeHost |
| Visitor caps | None on any plan | A soft bandwidth limit of 100 GB a month | NudgeHost |
| Running a business on it | No restriction on what a hosted file is used for | Not allowed under their terms | NudgeHost |
| Keeping something private | A password on Pro and Studio | Their docs advise against sensitive transactions | NudgeHost |
| Sites per account | 10 live links on the free plan | One user or organisation site | NudgeHost |
| If you want | Choose |
|---|---|
| A link from a file, with no repository | NudgeHost |
| To publish without making an account | NudgeHost |
| A site larger than our free plan takes, at no cost | GitHub Pages |
| To run a price list or an order page on it | NudgeHost |
| The site to live beside the code that builds it | GitHub Pages |
| A password or an expiry date on the link | NudgeHost |
| One API call that returns a live address | NudgeHost |
| Feature | NudgeHost | GitHub Pages |
|---|---|---|
| What you need before you start | A file and a browser. Nothing is installed and nothing is configured first | A GitHub account, a repository, and a commit |
| Upload without an account | Yes, up to 25MB and 3 links, with a working URL before anything asks who you are | No, an account and a repository come first |
| How you publish | Drop the file in and the address answers as soon as the bytes land | Commit to the repository, then the Jekyll pipeline or a custom Actions workflow builds and deploys it |
| Where the file lives | In your account, at its own slug. A ZIP unpacks and serves at its own subdomain | In a repository. Public repositories on GitHub Free, public and private on Pro, Team, Enterprise Cloud and Enterprise Server |
| Sites per account | 10 active links on the free plan, each with its own address | One user or organisation site per account |
WinnerNudgeHost
This is the section the comparison turns on. Their sequence has four things in it before a link exists, an account, a repository, a commit and a build, and each one is a place to stop. Ours has the file.
That gap matters most when the file is the whole job. A scanned contract or a slide deck going to one person does not want a repository around it, and on the free plan it does not get one.
| Feature | NudgeHost | GitHub Pages |
|---|---|---|
| Published site size | 25MB a file on the free plan, 250MB on Pro and 1GB on Studio | Published sites may be no larger than 1 GB |
| Source size on the free plan | 25MB a file, which covers an ordinary slide deck or a scanned contract | Source repositories have a recommended limit of 1 GB |
| Visitor caps | None on any plan | A soft bandwidth limit of 100 GB a month |
| Build limits | No build step, so there is nothing to queue and nothing to rebuild | A soft limit of 10 builds an hour, which does not apply with a custom Actions workflow |
| Deployment timeout | None. The upload either lands or is refused at the point you drop it in | Deployments time out after 10 minutes |
WinnerNudgeHost
Two of these five rows go to GitHub Pages and the table says so. A 1 GB published site and a 1 GB source repository are both well past what our free plan takes, and if the thing you are putting up is a large site, that is the figure to weigh.
The other three are about what sits between a change and a live page. A build that can queue behind ten an hour and time out at ten minutes is a build you have to think about. Dropping a file in is not.
What each plan carries, before the comparison starts on price.
| Plan | Monthly | Annual | A file | Live links | API access | Domains |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | 25MB | 10 active links | 2 API keys at 20 requests a minute | 0 custom domains | |
| Pro | $12/mo | $120/yr | 250MB | 10 API keys at 60 requests a minute | 1 custom domain | |
| Studio | $29/mo | $290/yr | 1GB | 30 API keys at 150 requests a minute | 5 custom domains |
GitHub Pages has no plan ladder of its own. The limits above are the same on every GitHub plan, and the one thing paying changes is where the source may live. GitHub Free publishes Pages from public repositories, while Pro, Team, Enterprise Cloud and Enterprise Server publish from public and private ones. The 1 GB ceilings, the 100 GB soft bandwidth limit, the ten builds an hour and the ten minute deployment timeout do not move.
| Feature | NudgeHost | GitHub Pages |
|---|---|---|
| Running a business on it | No restriction on what a hosted file is used for. Reselling NudgeHost itself is not allowed. | Not allowed. Their terms rule out an online business, an e-commerce site, and commercial software as a service. |
| Anything you need to keep private | A password on Pro and Studio, and link expiry on every plan including the free one. | Their docs say a Pages site should not be used for sensitive transactions such as sending passwords or credit card numbers. |
| Replacing a file at the same URL | Every plan, keeping the slug, the view count and any password or expiry already set, up to 4MB per replacement | A new commit, which re-runs the build within the soft limit of 10 an hour |
WinnerNudgeHost
The commercial restriction is the one to read twice, because it is their wording rather than our characterisation. A price list, an order form or a client-facing SaaS page sits outside what GitHub allows on Pages, and a large share of the people looking for a quick host want exactly one of those.
The rest of the section follows from what each product is for. A link you can put a password on, set an expiry against, and replace in place without touching a repository is the shape of a document you are sending to somebody, and you can update the source later on any plan.
| Feature | NudgeHost | GitHub Pages |
|---|---|---|
| What one API call does | Takes a file and returns the address it is reachable at, in two calls with the bytes in between | Commits to a repository, which then has to be configured to publish before an address exists |
| API access on the free plan | Yes, 2 API keys at 20 requests a minute | A REST API is published and reaches repositories and Pages |
| MCP server | Yes, on every plan, at https://www.nudgehost.com/api/mcp with four tools | Yes, GitHub publishes one |
| Rate limiting | 20 requests a minute on free, 150 on Studio | Rate limits may apply, answering 429 |
| Between the call and a live page | Nothing. The address answers once the bytes are stored | The Pages build, which times out after 10 minutes |
WinnerNudgeHost
Both publish a REST API and both publish an MCP server, so the question is not which of them a script can reach. It is what one call gets you.
Ours takes a file and hands back the address it is reachable at. Theirs writes to a repository, and a repository is not an address until something builds it and something else has been configured to serve it. For an agent that has just generated a file and needs somewhere to put it, that difference is the whole task.
The v1 REST API is open on the free plan, at 2 keys and 20 requests a minute, so this runs before any money changes hands.
curl -X POST https://www.nudgehost.com/api/v1/uploads \
-H "Authorization: Bearer nh_sk_REPLACE_WITH_YOUR_OWN_KEY" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{
"filename": "report.pdf",
"contentType": "application/pdf",
"fileSize": 182734
}'That answers with the slug, the address the file will have, and a URL to PUT the bytes to. A second call to /api/v1/uploads/{id}/complete finishes it and returns the address the file is actually reachable at. The MCP server answers at https://www.nudgehost.com/api/mcp with four tools, share_text, create_upload_url, complete_upload and list_links, so an AI client can do the same job inside one conversation. Both request and response shapes are set out in the API documentation.
The sequence a reader can run before deciding anything. Nothing in it asks for an email address, and the ceiling is 25MB, the same size the free plan takes.
Drop the file in
Signed out, on the home page. A browser check runs before the upload starts and asks you for nothing. Anything over 25MB is refused at that point rather than part way through.
Take the address
The link comes back as nudgehost.com and the slug, live as soon as the bytes land. A ZIP that unpacks into a site gets its own subdomain instead, and that is the only case where the address takes a different shape.
Send it
You can hold 3 of these at once without an account, and each one runs for 7 days. A PDF, an image, a CSV or a JSON file carries nothing extra on the page. A converted Word file, a single HTML page and a page served out of an unpacked ZIP each carry a small attribution line at the foot.
Sign up when you want to keep it
A free account takes over the files behind your browser, clears the deadline and leaves every address alone. The free plan holds 10 active links, filled newest first, and anything past that stays anonymous and keeps its expiry until a slot opens.
The attribution line is the one thing an account removes from a page that already carries one. Everything else about the link, the address included, is the same before and after you sign up.
Moving a site across is a file operation. Get the built output onto your own machine, whether that is a folder of HTML, a build directory or a single page, and nothing about the destination needs configuring first.
Then drop it in. A single page goes up as it is, and a folder goes up as an archive that unpacks and serves at its own subdomain, with client-side routing working the way it did locally. There is no workflow file to write and no build to wait for, so the address answers as soon as the upload finishes.
The part that needs planning is the address. A NudgeHost link gets its own slug, and a github.io address you have already circulated will not follow you. Put the new page on your own domain and point the old one at it. Custom domains sit on the Pro plan.
GitHub Pages is the better home for a site that is already a repository, and it is more generous on size than our free plan. Neither of those is in dispute on this page.
NudgeHost is the pick when the thing you have is a file and the thing you need is a link. There is no account, no repository, no commit and no build in the way, the free plan holds 10 links at 25MB each, and our terms say nothing about what the file is for, where theirs rule out an online business, an e-commerce site and commercial software as a service.
For the other two products in this category, see how NudgeHost compares to Tiiny.host and NudgeHost vs Linkyhost.
Yes, and it is roomier than our free plan. A published site may be up to 1 GB and the recommended limit on a source repository is the same. What it asks for is a GitHub account, a repository and a commit, and then a build that has ten minutes to finish.
Their terms say no. The GitHub Terms for Additional Products and Features state that Pages is not intended or allowed as free web hosting to run an online business, an e-commerce site, or any site primarily directed at facilitating commercial transactions or providing commercial software as a service. NudgeHost places no restriction on what a hosted file is used for.
No. There is no repository, no commit and no build step. Drop the file into the browser and the address answers as soon as the bytes land, up to 25MB before you have signed up for anything.
Their docs say a Pages site should not be used for sensitive transactions such as sending passwords or credit card numbers. NudgeHost carries password protection on Pro and Studio, and link expiry works on the free plan.
25MB on the free plan, 250MB on Pro and 1GB on Studio. GitHub Pages allows a published site of up to 1 GB, so for a large static site they have the higher ceiling.
GitHub publishes a soft bandwidth limit of 100 GB a month on Pages, and notes that rate limits may apply and answer 429. NudgeHost caps no visitors on any plan.
On NudgeHost the address answers as soon as the upload finishes. GitHub Pages builds the site after a commit, with a soft limit of ten builds an hour that does not apply when a custom Actions workflow is used, and a deployment that times out after ten minutes.
Both publish a REST API and an MCP server. The difference is what one call does. A NudgeHost call takes a file and returns the address it is reachable at, on 2 API keys at 20 requests a minute from the free plan. A GitHub call commits to a repository, which then has to be configured to publish before an address exists.
Yes. Custom domains sit on the Pro plan, at 1 custom domain, rising to 5 custom domains on Studio. Point the domain at the new page once it is answering, then retire the old address.
The free plan is genuinely free. Try it before you decide.
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