dropto.run vs GitHub Pages
GitHub Pages wants a repository. This wants a folder.
Everything goes through Git
Changing a word is a commit, and a build too if the site has one. That is the price of keeping the history in Git, and it is a real price for anybody on the project who does not use Git.
Keeping the source private costs a plan
On GitHub Free, Pages publishes from public repositories only. Publishing from a private one needs Pro or above — and the site is still public unless the organisation is on Enterprise Cloud.
Free, and genuinely free
No plan to reach, custom domains with HTTPS included, and no bill at the end for a public repository. For a project's documentation that is hard to argue with.
When GitHub Pages is the better choice
- ·The site belongs to a public repository. Source and site live in one place, reviewed in one flow, with no second provider to sign up to or pay.
- ·Your history really is the history. Git is a better record than any version list a host can show you — provided the people editing the site use it.
- ·Jekyll and Actions are already there. A build you can shape however you like, with the whole Actions ecosystem behind it, at no cost on a public repository.
- ·Nothing here to outlive. It is run by GitHub and has been for over a decade. That is a fair thing to weigh against a smaller service.
Line by line
Their figures were read from their own pages on 15 September 2026. Ours are the ceilings the server enforces, which is why the rows that would be numbers here point at the plans instead of repeating them.
| dropto.run | GitHub Pages | |
|---|---|---|
| Folder or zip to a live link | Yes | No — commit to a repository |
| Git repository needed | No | Yes |
| Build runs before the site is live | No build at all | Optional — Jekyll or an Actions workflow |
| Publishing from a private source | Always | Needs GitHub Pro or above |
| Keeping the site itself private | Password, from the Starter tier | An organisation on Enterprise Cloud |
| Putting an earlier version back | One click, live in under a minute | Re-run that Actions run, within 30 days, or revert |
| A folder of Markdown served with a sidebar | Yes — no build, no theme | Through Jekyll and a theme |
| Size ceiling | Per publish and per account, from the plans table | 1 GB per site |
| Bandwidth counted against you | No | Soft limit of 100 GB a month |
| Publish rate | A monthly and a daily budget of new or changed files | Soft limit of 10 builds an hour |
| Reviewers comment on the page itself | On plans with comments: pinned on the live site, reviewers sign in to Drop2Run | Not documented |
| Publishing from a script or an agent | CLI, API token, MCP server | Git push, or an Actions workflow |
Which rows are here is our choice, which is what every comparison page does. What is in them is not: each figure above came from their usage limits, which plans publish from private repositories and publishing a site privately. If one is out of date, tell us and it is corrected with the date on it.
Nothing counts your readers.
Files are served from the edge out of storage where egress costs nothing, so there is no traffic figure for your pages to pass on — and no plan here on which one appears. What is bounded is publishing, and the calls a site sends on to your own API, and those figures are read from the same table the server enforces. Every number below comes from the API at page load, not from this page. All of them, side by side →
What GitHub Pages counts
- ✕Bandwidth, softly — 100 GB a month
- ✕Builds, softly — 10 an hour
- ✕Site size — 1 GB
Read 15 September 2026.
What is counted here
- ✓New or changed files, against a monthly and a daily budget. Unchanged files are reused rather than uploaded again, so publishing the same site twice costs almost nothing.
- ✓Storage, counting each file once however many versions hold it. Republishing the same files adds nothing.
- ✓Calls a site sends to your own API, against a monthly allowance. Only where a site routes
/api/*to an API of yours; a page that does not never has one counted. - ✕Never visits, bandwidth, page requests or build minutes. There is no build, and traffic to your pages is neither billed nor throttled.
2,000 files a publish, free
With an account and no card. A folder of documents meets the file count long before it meets the bytes.
50 MB a publish, free
The size of one upload. What the account holds in total, across sites and versions, is a separate ceiling.
No limit on sites, free
Each on its own subdomain. What bounds an account is its storage, not how many sites it splits that into.
$5 / month with your own domain
Starter is the cheapest tier here that carries a custom domain and its certificate. On GitHub Pages: free on a public repository, on GitHub Free.
No traffic tier, at any price
There is no plan above this one that lifts a bandwidth cap, because there is no bandwidth cap to lift.
Who is going to be editing this
Publishing is dropping a folder, so the person who changes the site does not have to be the person who knows Git. A designer, a client or an agent can put a new version up, and the version before it is still one click away.
That is the whole difference, and it only matters if somebody outside the repository ever needs to publish. If nobody does, GitHub Pages is free and this is not.
On GitHub Pages every change is a commit, which is exactly what you want when the site is a project's documentation: review, blame and history come for free, and rolling back is a revert.
The cost lands on everybody else. A one-word fix is a pull request, a workflow run and a wait, and for somebody who does not work in Git it is not a slower path — it is a closed one.
Looking for a GitHub Pages alternative
The usual reason somebody types that is one of four: the source has to stay private and Pages will not publish from a private repository on a free account, the site itself has to stay unlisted, the people editing it do not use Git, or the Actions run between saving a word and seeing it has stopped being worth waiting for. All four are gone here — what goes up is the folder, and the address exists about fifteen seconds later.
If none of those is your reason, GitHub Pages is hard to beat and you should stay: it is free with no time limit, a custom domain and its certificate cost nothing, and the site lives beside the code that produces it. This is not a cheaper GitHub Pages. It is a different trade — no repository, and therefore no repository's history either.
Moving over
Whatever you publish there is already a folder, and a folder is what this takes.
- 1
Build it the way you already do
Keep the repository, keep the workflow. What changes is where the output goes, not how it is made.
- 2
Publish the output folder
Drop it here, or add one CLI step to the workflow you already run so every push publishes as it does now.
- 3
Move the domain when you are ready
Point the DNS record here and the certificate is issued for you. The github.io address keeps working until you turn Pages off.
Questions
GitHub Pages is free. Why pay anything?
Mostly you should not, if the site comes from a public repository and everybody who edits it uses Git. The reasons to pay are a private source without a GitHub plan for it, a site that must not be public, publishing by people who do not commit, and rolling back without a rebuild.
Can I keep the repository on GitHub?
Yes. Nothing here asks you to move code. Publish from an Actions step with the CLI, or drop the built folder by hand — the repository stays exactly where it is.
Is my site indexed by search engines?
On a default subdomain, no: every response carries X-Robots-Tag: noindex, deliberately, because one phishing page on a shared domain would flag every site on it. Attach your own domain and that header is not sent.
What about Jekyll?
There is no build step here at all, so a Jekyll site has to be built before it is published — locally or in Actions, either is one command. A folder of plain Markdown needs neither: it is served through a reader as it is.
Try it with the folder you already have.
No account and no card to publish. Sign in and the site stops expiring.
GitHub Pages is a trademark of its owner. This page is not affiliated with or endorsed by them, and every figure about their service was read on 15 September 2026.