How to Deploy a Spring Boot AI Chat App to the Cloud for Free Using Render
A locally running Spring Boot chat app with PostgreSQL history is only useful as long as the terminal stays open, making cloud deployment necessary for real-world access. The article compares four free-tier cloud platforms — Railway, Fly.io, Koyeb, and Render — ultimately recommending Render for its no-credit-card signup and automatic GitHub-based deployments. Before deploying, the app must be hosted on GitHub, use environment variables for secrets, and be packaged as a Docker image to ensure consistent runtime environments across machines. A multi-stage Dockerfile is introduced to first build the app using a Maven and Java 17 image, then run it on a lighter JRE-only image to keep the final container size around 200MB. This approach lets developers move from a local script to a live, publicly accessible URL running around the clock.
This is an AI-generated summary. ShortSingh links to the original source for the complete article.

Discussion (0)
Log in to join the discussion and vote.
Log in