Where the two differ on what you can hand them, on how long the link lives, and on what the free plan meters.
Figures last verified 5 September 2026
Both of these publish without an account, and Netlify has done it for longer. What differs is what they accept. Netlify Drop takes a folder, a ZIP or a single HTML file and serves the site inside it. NudgeHost takes any file and renders it at its own address, so a PDF, a CSV, a Word document or a photograph each become a page rather than a download.
with a viewer for PDFs, images, video, audio, CSV, JSON and Word documents
at its own address for each of them, rather than a download prompt
carrying an index.html unpacks and serves as a site on its own subdomain
a folder, a ZIP or a single HTML file
is what comes out, which is the job Drop is built for
detected and run for you once you are logged in, which we do not do at all
from the moment it publishes, signed out
at once without an account, up to 25MB each
after you sign up, with the deadline cleared and nothing to re-send
to claim the temporary project an anonymous deploy creates
on that temporary project, from the moment it deploys
before it is permanent, rather than a signup that adopts it later
Theirs is a credit budget. Ours is a file count and a per-file ceiling.
at 25MB a file, with nothing counted per visit
a month, at 15 a production deploy and 20 a gigabyte of bandwidth
| Theme | NudgeHost | Netlify Drop | Winner |
|---|---|---|---|
| What each one accepts | Any file, each rendered as a page in a viewer built for the type | A folder, a ZIP or a single HTML file | NudgeHost |
| Publishing without an account | Yes, up to 25MB and 3 links | Yes, a dragged folder, ZIP or HTML file | Even |
| How long an unclaimed link lives | 7 days | One hour to claim the temporary project | NudgeHost |
| Framework building | None. Files are served as uploaded | Detected and run when you are logged in | Netlify Drop |
| What the free plan meters | 10 links at 25MB a file | 300 credits a month, a hard cap | NudgeHost |
| What happens at the limit | The next upload is refused. Published links keep serving | The project pauses and visitors get a Site not available page | NudgeHost |
| Custom domains with SSL | Pro and Studio | On the free plan | Netlify Drop |
| Deploy previews | None. A replacement swaps the file at the same address | Unlimited, on the free plan | Netlify Drop |
| Running a coding agent for you | None. An MCP server an agent calls from wherever it runs | Agent Runners, from their dashboard | Netlify Drop |
| API access on the free plan | Yes, 2 API keys at 20 requests a minute | Deploys can be created through their API | Even |
| If you want | Choose |
|---|---|
| A link that lasts longer than an hour unclaimed | NudgeHost |
| A framework project built for you | Netlify Drop |
| No credit budget behind a published link | NudgeHost |
| A custom domain with SSL at no cost | Netlify Drop |
| Published links that cannot be paused by usage | NudgeHost |
| Deploy previews before a change goes live | Netlify Drop |
| A coding agent run from the host's dashboard | Netlify Drop |
| One call that takes a file and returns an address | NudgeHost |
| Feature | NudgeHost | Netlify Drop |
|---|---|---|
| What you can drop in | Any file. A ZIP that carries an index.html unpacks and serves as a site at its own subdomain instead | A folder, a ZIP or a single HTML file |
| A PDF, an image or a video | Each renders in the page at its own address, in a viewer built for the type | Not one of the three things Drop takes, so there is no page at the other end |
| A CSV or a JSON file | Rendered as a table or a tree up to 10MB, and offered as a download above that | Not one of the three things Drop takes, so there is no page at the other end |
| A Word document | Converted at upload and rendered as a page. A file that will not convert, and a legacy .doc, are offered as a download instead | Not one of the three things Drop takes, so there is no page at the other end |
| A site you drop | It is served as uploaded. There is no build step and nothing to configure | Logged out, the files are published as they are. Logged in, the framework is detected and built first |
| What the address looks like | nudgehost.com and a slug, live as soon as the bytes land, or its own subdomain for an unpacked ZIP | A live URL on a temporary project |
WinnerNudgeHost
This is the difference the rest of the page rests on. Netlify Drop publishes a website, and it is good at it. Hand it the thing most people are actually holding, a PDF, a scanned contract, a spreadsheet exported as CSV, a Word document, a photograph, and there is nothing for it to serve.
A NudgeHost link renders each of those as a page at its own address, in a viewer built for the type, and it does that before you have an account. The row they take is the one where the input is already a website, which is their product rather than ours.
| Feature | NudgeHost | Netlify Drop |
|---|---|---|
| An unclaimed link, published signed out | Runs for 7 days, and you can hold 3 at once | A temporary project that must be claimed within one hour |
| Claiming it | Signing up adopts the files behind your browser, clears the deadline and leaves every address alone, up to 10 active links newest first | Claim the temporary project inside the hour |
| Updating what is behind the link | Upload a replacement and the slug, the view count and any password or expiry stay as they were, up to 4MB a time | Drag the rebuilt output folder onto the dropzone on that site's Deploys page |
| What can stop a live link | Deleting it, an expiry you set yourself, or the anonymous window running out. Nothing about how much it is used | Reaching the credit limit, which pauses the project and serves a Site not available page |
| One project over its limit | Nothing about one link affects another | Their FAQ says all projects on the account are paused |
WinnerNudgeHost
An hour is enough time to claim something you meant to keep and not enough for anything else. 7 days covers a file sent on Friday and looked at on Monday, and the address survives the signup rather than being reissued.
The last two rows are the ones worth reading twice. A NudgeHost link stops for a reason you chose. A Netlify project can stop because a different project on the same account ran out of credits, which is their own FAQ rather than our characterisation.
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 |
Netlify ladders on credits. Free is $0 forever with a hard limit of 300 credits a month, one member, one concurrent build and one-day analytics retention. Personal is $9 a month for 1,000 credits, one member and seven-day analytics, with add-on credits at $5 per 500. Pro is $20 a month for 3,000 credits with tiers up to 20,000, unlimited members, three concurrent builds and thirty-day analytics, with add-on credits at $10 per 1,500. Enterprise is priced on application. A production deploy costs 15 credits, bandwidth 20 a gigabyte, web requests 2 per 10,000 and compute 10 a GB-hour. Accounts created before 4 September 2025 are on legacy plans and unaffected by any of it.
| Feature | NudgeHost | Netlify Drop |
|---|---|---|
| What it holds | 10 active links at 25MB a file | $0 forever with a hard limit of 300 credits a month, and one member |
| What a publish costs | Nothing is counted per publish. There is no deploy unit to spend | 15 credits a production deploy, so 300 is twenty of them |
| What traffic costs | Nothing is counted per visit | 20 credits a gigabyte of bandwidth, 2 credits per 10,000 web requests, 10 credits a GB-hour of compute |
| What happens at the limit | The next upload is refused at 10 links. Everything already published keeps serving | The project pauses and visitors get a Site not available page |
| Custom domains with SSL | 1 custom domain on Pro, 5 custom domains on Studio | Included on the free plan |
WinnerNudgeHost
A budget and a ceiling fail differently. Ours refuses the next upload and leaves every published link alone, which is a wall you meet while adding something. Theirs pauses the project, which is a wall your readers meet while opening something.
Their free plan cannot overspend, and that is worth saying plainly: 300 credits is a hard cap rather than a bill. What it can do is stop. On the free plan here the only thing that stops is the next upload.
| Feature | NudgeHost | Netlify Drop |
|---|---|---|
| How long the numbers are kept | A view count that stays with the link for as long as the link exists | One-day analytics and observability retention on Free, seven days on Personal, thirty days on Pro |
| Whether it is public straight away | The link is live as soon as the bytes land, so an address exists before you have decided to share it | Projects are private by default until you publish |
| What a visitor sees when it stops working | A 404 for a deleted link or an anonymous one past its window, and an expiry screen where the owner set the date themselves | A Site not available page when the project is paused |
WinnerNudgeHost
Retention is the row that carries this. A NudgeHost view count is kept as long as the link is, where Netlify's free plan keeps a day of analytics and its paid plans a week and a month.
Their private-by-default state is a genuine control we have no answer to, and it is the reason this section is close rather than clear. You can also update the source later on any plan, which puts a corrected file behind an address that is already circulating.
| Feature | NudgeHost | Netlify Drop |
|---|---|---|
| What one API call does | Takes a file and returns the address it is reachable at, in two calls with the bytes in between | Creates a deploy from a file digest or a ZIP through their API |
| API access on the free plan | Yes, 2 API keys at 20 requests a minute | Deploys can be created through their API |
| MCP server | Every plan including free, at https://www.nudgehost.com/api/mcp with four tools | Published, alongside agent instructions at netlify.ai |
| Running a coding agent for you | None. Our MCP server is called by an agent running wherever you already run it | Agent Runners run Claude Code, OpenAI Codex and Google Gemini from their dashboard |
| Seeing a change before it is live | None. A replacement swaps the file at the address people already have | Unlimited deploy previews, and every agent run that changes a file generates one |
| Between the call and a live page | Nothing. The address answers once the bytes are stored | A build, with one concurrent build on Free and three on Pro |
| What one publish costs a script | Nothing. There is no deploy unit and no budget for a script to spend | 15 credits a production deploy, so a free account has twenty of them a month |
| What a link that gets popular costs | Nothing is counted per visit | 20 credits a gigabyte of bandwidth and 2 credits per 10,000 web requests, against the same budget |
Even
Both publish a REST API and both publish an MCP server, so the question is not which one a script can reach. Past that the two split cleanly. Agent Runners execute Claude Code, Codex and Gemini from their own dashboard, and every agent run that touches a file comes back as a deploy preview, unlimited and on the free plan, and NudgeHost has nothing that answers either.
What is on our side is the shape of one call and what it costs. A NudgeHost upload takes a file and hands back the address it is reachable at, on 2 API keys at 20 requests a minute from the free plan, with no build in between, nothing charged per publish and nothing counted per visit. A script publishing twice a day meets a credit budget on one of these and not the other.
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 v1 API docs.
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 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 build to wait for and no queue to sit in, so the address answers as soon as the upload finishes. The free plan takes 25MB a file and holds 10 active links.
The part that needs planning is the address. A NudgeHost link gets its own slug, and a netlify.app 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 here, where Netlify includes them on its free one.
If the thing in your hand is a PDF, a CSV, a Word document or a photograph, Netlify Drop has no answer for it. It takes a folder, a ZIP or a single HTML file and serves the site inside. NudgeHost renders each of those as a page at its own address, in a viewer built for the type, before you have an account.
The rest follows from that. A NudgeHost link runs for 7 days unclaimed against their hour, the free plan holds 10 active links with nothing counted per visit, and reaching that limit refuses the next upload rather than pausing anything already published.
Where the input is already a website, they are the better tool and this page says so throughout. They build what you drag in, they include a custom domain with SSL on the free plan, and their Agent Runners and deploy previews have no equivalent here.
For the rest of the category, see the NudgeHost and Tiiny.host comparison, NudgeHost vs Static.app and NudgeHost vs GitHub Pages.
Yes, and Netlify Drop has done it for years. The difference is how long the result lasts. Their anonymous deploy creates a temporary project that has to be claimed within one hour. A NudgeHost link runs for 7 days, and signing up afterwards adopts it and clears the deadline without changing the address.
It stops answering, and a visitor gets a 404 rather than an explanation, because the link was published on the understanding that it lasts 7 days. The nightly sweep then removes the file itself, apart from a file that owns a custom domain, which is held back. Signing up before the window closes keeps the link and the address permanently.
The unit their plans are sold in. A production deploy costs 15 credits, bandwidth 20 a gigabyte, web requests 2 per 10,000 and compute 10 a GB-hour. The free plan is a hard limit of 300 a month, which is twenty production deploys before anything else is counted.
No. There is no credit budget, no bandwidth meter and no request counter. The free plan holds 10 active links at 25MB a file, and reaching it refuses the next upload while everything already published keeps serving.
It pauses, and visitors get a Site not available page. Their FAQ states that if one project exceeds its limits, all projects on the account are paused. The free plan is a hard cap rather than a bill, so it cannot be exceeded or run up a cost.
Netlify. Dropped in while logged in, the framework is detected and the build runs before anything is published. NudgeHost does not build anything: zip the output folder yourself and it unpacks and serves as a site with client-side routing working.
They are ahead here and the developer section on this page says so. Agent Runners execute Claude Code, OpenAI Codex and Google Gemini from their dashboard, and every agent run that changes a file generates a deploy preview. NudgeHost publishes an MCP server on every plan including free, with four tools, which suits an agent already running somewhere else and needing an address for what it just produced.
On Netlify, yes, with SSL. On NudgeHost custom domains start on Pro, at 1 custom domain, rising to 5 custom domains on Studio. That row goes to them.
No. Nothing is counted per visit and nothing about usage stops a link. The only things that stop a NudgeHost link are deleting it, an expiry you set yourself, or the anonymous window running out on a link nobody claimed.
The free plan is genuinely free. Try it before you decide.
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