Like others said, everything runs on a "server". You can run a web application without standing up your own server though. Check out AWS / Google Cloud / Azure / Heroku for hosting providers.

nope. but you can setup portable web server for deploy your project in usb falsh disk or compact disk. howtogeek.com/howto/14998/turn-your-flash-drive-i…

Do you mean “serverless”? blog.codepen.io/2018/01/15/build-serverless-blog-…

Well, if you don't want servers, you can run your full web application with the help of Serverless Architecture. You may use popular serverless providers like AWS, Azure and Google functions.

One should note that, serverless doesn't mean there are no servers. It just means that you are not required to maintain servers or provision them or any sort of infrastructure. Servers will be there but you won't be required to worry about it.

It's not possible.... However, its not necessary that you setup your own server. You can uses online services like Heroku, AWS, etc.... You can deploy your web apps there.. Some of them are free too....

Not literally (there is "serverless" but it is not literally serverless).

As you said it yourself, you "create a web application and deploy it". This deploy is always to a server, which in turn "serves" your website to anyone who "requests" it.

Hi, I think you are a bit confused in your understanding of what a server is. The answers below explained it a bit. You can think of it as a computer that hosts your application or content. That's not too be confused with creating your own backend code. While creating your own server side code with languages such as java, node.js, php, etc will allow you a large amount of benefit and additional functionalities (such as interacting with a database to your liking), you can also deploy a static client-side website on someone else's platform, such as bitballoon or amazon s3. I recommend bitballoon for beginners, since you simply have to drag and drop your zipped up application to deploy your website.

If You want to know "How run a full web app without PAY for a server".

firebase.google.com/docs/hosting

The question sounds like you are planning to create a web app that runs locally on the system. Ever head about Electron?

Question is really vague like others said. I'll just guess you're talking about "serverless" apps which are not completely without server :) Because as soon as something is online (and I guess you don't want to distribute it by post) it is on some server.

However, term "server" is wide. It can be a peace of rented hardware with OS (virtual or not, shared hosting or dedicated) or it can be a "service" like Amazon S3, Contentful, etc.

The later, recently is considered to NOT be a "server" but a service (although, server is behind it). That said, you can have a serverless app by mixing different services and technologies together like AWS S3 for static site hosting + Javascript/React for app code that fully runs on client side. In this case you only need static site hosting or some service like Netlify or AWS S3 to host it staticaly. Hell, you don't even need that, you can send it as a zip file via email in theory. So it runs fully on client, you only need Internet to download it.

Of course, without a database and connection to other online services (like email, facebook, etc) it will not do much (offline or online). So you can expand it with services like AWS Lambda + AWS API Gateway + AWS DynamoDB to build complex apps with dtabase and API backends, etc. It would be still considered "serverless" because you would base it on "services" and not "servers" but in practice, behind every service at the end there is a server :)

If you are talking about serverless, you got it wrong.

Even the serverless architecture uses a server. Only you don't manage all that shit. Normally you just write a function and your FaaS manages it (with it internal server).

It depends on the requirements. Do you need a database?

Even with a DB required, please elaborate your definition of "without a server", will using something like AWS Lambda and Serverless Aurora for backend and hosting the frontend on S3 in a JAMStack manner be the solution that you are looking for?

Even Serverless has servers but you are not managing them. Is that what you are looking for?

Well these files have to come from somewhere with proper response header no?

..Ok, everyone gave some sensible answer here. But for the sake of fun, I tried something --> first I do not know what you consider web application but let's suppose we don't need a db.

So normally I had this page, back from 2014:

i-pv.org/hexBinsSort.html

it is an old project so it doesn't matter what it is. But what I did is, I opened a gist, put some js code there and then changed couple of scripts tags within the html and then uploaded the html to github.

Then I opened it from rawgit, you can use any other service:

cdn.rawgit.com/IbrahimTanyalcin/BLOB.js/0393cc98/…

Now, of course this is a quick demo, the links are not working and so forth but now you have about 55mb of Storage (local + idb) on client. With these you can do apps like image/audio processing and so on:)

As long as you are not storing sensitive cookies or personal data or load script from untrusted 3rd party you seem to have something better than nothing :))) Also try github.io :)

May be, explain your use case better! :)

• What sort of application is it?
• Which technology does it use?
• Why do you think you need web server?
• Who are the consumers of this web app?

Once you answer these, we can help you better.

No, there is no way a server is required to have your web application files online.

If you just need a hosting or a free hosting you may try an account from webdo.com

and next the ide.webdo.com that will allow to edit and host an AngularJS or React web application.

Is it possible to get a book from a library without a library?

Is it possible to access an Internet without a computer?

Is it possible to talk to another person if you the only person on Earth?

And I want to get 1 billion USD without moving my lazy butt. You may wishfully think whatever you want, you will never get it.

A server is just that, a piece of (hardware or) software which serves content to the network. If you do not have a server, there is nothing which makes the app available, hence no webapp. So, you need server!

If you just want to make your webapp available, depending on the backend language, you have different options. There are a lot of hosters out there, which let you upload PHP and NodeJS applications. Also, a lot of cloud providers let you run a dedicated application, no need for OS management. However, you might need to get a virtual or even dedicated computer, which you have to configure yourself, if you cannot host your webapp backend any other way (for example if you are using a binary server application).