For some hackaton in some AI training I did some time ago, we used Vercel and didn't pay for it. Best way to figure out free hosting for a website is to ask AI. Give a prompt that includes free to use, perhaps even without a signup (if that exists), and ask it to explain the limits of such free web hosting.

If you have a server, or a laptop that can run 24x7, you can host the page on that without other costs other than your electricity. AI can help to set that up for you as well. If you use something like ChatGPT Work, it may even set the whole thing up for you (I did play around with AIs having execution permissions on my own laptop, so I do not know what they are capable of these days)

so I don't know why I couldn't just load it up somewhere

Of course you can load it up somewhere, but keep in mind that when that somewhere is not on your own hardware, somewhere/someone incurs the costs to run your (website) code and generally asks some money for that. Though some provide some compute resources for free.

LOVE THE BARREL! Let us know when you topped it off, and subsequently when you emptied it again... Target: within max 1 month from full to empty 😆