CodeIt guide
Glitch shut down. Where do beginner web projects live now?
Glitch ended web hosting on 8 July 2025. What was lost, what happened to existing projects, why redirects expire, and where to go now.
Short answer: Glitch ended all web app hosting and user app profiles on 8 July 2025, citing "high operational costs and increasing misuse by bad actors." If you followed a tutorial that told you to "remix this on Glitch," that instruction no longer works, and the glitch.me link you were given is either dead or running on a redirect that is close to expiring.
This page covers what exactly stopped working, what happened to projects people had already built, why the redirects are on a clock, and where to go now, sorted by what you were actually using Glitch for. Some of those use cases have a clean replacement. One of them does not.
What shut down, and when
| Date | What happened |
|---|---|
| May 2025 | Shutdown announced. Glitch Pro closed to new signups. |
| 8 July 2025 | All web app hosting stopped. User app profiles removed. Live glitch.me sites went dark. |
| Through end of 2025 | Dashboards stayed open so people could download their project code and set up redirects. |
| 31 December 2025 | Final deadline to configure a project URL redirect. After this, no new redirects. |
| End of 2026 | Redirects were promised to work "at least through the end of 2026." That is the floor, not a guarantee of more. |
That last row is the part most people miss. If you set up a redirect in 2025 and stopped thinking about it, it is now on borrowed time: the only commitment made was "at least through the end of 2026." Anything pointing at that URL, a portfolio, a course page, a README, a school handout, should be repointed now rather than after it breaks.
Glitch said it would "focus on helping developers share and discover remixable apps." The company did not disappear. The hosting did.
What was actually lost
It is easy to describe Glitch as "free hosting" and conclude that any free host replaces it. That misreads why it mattered.
Glitch put four things in the same browser tab, with no setup between them:
- Remixable examples. You started from a working app, not a blank file. Click remix, you have your own copy.
- In-browser editing. No install, no local dev environment, no terminal.
- Instant hosting. Every project had a live URL from the first second, updating as you typed.
- **No account friction to see things.** You could look at and copy real, running code before committing to anything.
The combination is what has no replacement. Plenty of services do any one of these well. Almost nothing does all four with zero setup, which is precisely why so many beginner tutorials, school courses and "build your first web app" guides leaned on it, and why so many of those guides are now quietly broken. If you are working through a tutorial that mentions Glitch, the tutorial is stale. That is not your mistake.
What happened to projects people had already made
Code was downloadable from the dashboard through the end of 2025. If you did that, you have a folder of files and you can move it anywhere below. If you did not, the window has closed and the dashboard-based export route is gone. Check old email for anything you sent yourself, and check whether the project was ever pushed to GitHub, a fair number of Glitch projects were.
If the project was a static site (HTML, CSS, JavaScript, no server), the files will work anywhere. If it had a Node backend, environment variables and any data stored in the project will not have come along cleanly.
Where to go now, by what you were using Glitch for
| You used Glitch to… | Best move now | What you actually run into |
|---|---|---|
| Host a static site (HTML/CSS/JS) | Neocities or GitHub Pages | Neocities: account + email; its terms state no minimum age. GitHub Pages: 13+ required, and you need basic repo concepts. |
| Host a static site with drag-and-drop | Netlify drop | Account required; terms state 13+. No card for the free tier. |
| Same, on Vercel | Vercel | Account required; its terms state you must be at least 16, higher than most people assume, and it rules out a lot of learners. |
| Share a code snippet or demo | CodePen or JSFiddle | Fine for a snippet or single page. These are not whole-site hosts; do not try to make one a website. |
| Publish a browser game | itch.io | Account required. Users 13+; publishers must be 18+ or have parental/guardian consent. |
| Run a small Node/Express backend for free | No clean answer. See below. | This is the genuine gap. |
| Remix someone's working example | CodeSandbox, StackBlitz, GitHub template repos | Closest in spirit. Hosting is more limited and the free tiers move around. |
| Teach a class | GitHub Pages plus GitHub Classroom, if students are 13+ | Under-13 classes are the hardest case. There is no drop-in equivalent. |
The part with no good answer: free Node backends
If your Glitch project had a server, an Express app, a Discord bot, a webhook receiver, anything with a database, there is no free replacement that works the way Glitch did.
Render, Railway and Fly.io all host Node apps. All three involve a git repo or a CLI, an account, and free tiers that sleep, expire, or ask for a card at some point. Cloudflare Workers has a generous free tier but a different programming model that older tutorials will not match.
None of them let a twelve-year-old click "remix" and have a running server thirty seconds later. That specific thing is gone, and it is worth being blunt about it rather than pretending a replacement exists.
If you are a parent or teacher who just found a dead link
Most beginner tutorials that used Glitch built static pages, not servers. In that case the project is easy to rescue: HTML, CSS and JavaScript are ordinary files, and any host in the table will serve them. The work is not lost; the address was.
Disclosure: we make a tool in this space
We build CodeIt (codeitlearn.com), a browser-based studio where a learner describes a website, game or quiz and gets a working version they can play. They change it by moving things on the page, picking colours and fonts, or asking for what they want. A tab then shows what the project is made of and opens the lesson behind each idea it used. The project stays open and changeable rather than locked. Free tier: a monthly allowance of assisted project builds and two learner profiles with parent view, free now, no card required. Built for ages 8 to 14, with parent-managed, email-verified profiles for 5-12 and independent accounts from 13.
Who this is not for, and where we are not the answer on this page. If your goal is to get a Glitch project you already built back online, it is not a migration tool and not a host for your existing files, use Neocities or GitHub Pages. If you need a Node backend, we do not do that at all. And importantly for this topic: managed under-13 profiles cannot publish publicly. If the whole point is a live link a child can send to friends, that constraint matters, and for a child under 13 a parent-owned Neocities or GitHub Pages account is the more honest route. This is a tool for the learning loop, make something, change it, then see what it is made of, save it, not a replacement for hosting.
Common questions
Is Glitch completely gone? The company is not, but web app hosting and user app profiles are. Hosting ended 8 July 2025 and is not coming back.
My glitch.me link still works. Why? You or the project owner set up a redirect before the 31 December 2025 deadline. Those were promised to work at least through the end of 2026, so it is running out. Repoint it now.
Can I still download my old project? The dashboard route closed at the end of 2025. Check GitHub and old emails.
What is closest to the old Glitch feeling? CodeSandbox and StackBlitz for remixing and in-browser editing; Neocities for the "make a page, it is live, no ceremony" part. Nothing does both at once.
Last verified: 23 August 2026.
Questions parents ask first
Is Glitch completely gone?
The company is not, but web app hosting and user app profiles are. Hosting ended 8 July 2025 and is not coming back.
My glitch.me link still works. Why?
You or the project owner set up a redirect before the 31 December 2025 deadline. Those were promised to work at least through the end of 2026, so it is running out. Repoint it now.
Can I still download my old project?
The dashboard route closed at the end of 2025. Check GitHub and old emails.
What is closest to the old Glitch feeling?
CodeSandbox and StackBlitz for remixing and in-browser editing; Neocities for the "make a page, it is live, no ceremony" part. Nothing does both at once.
What you can do on CodeIt
Last verified 2026-08-23.