Top Heroku Alternatives

On February 6, 2026, Heroku announced it was moving to a sustaining engineering model. The platform keeps running, existing customers keep their plans, and nothing new gets built. If your app has sat on Heroku for years with a Procfile, a git push and a couple of add-ons, that is the moment you start reading pages like this one.

Every article ranking for this search was written by one of the platforms on the list, and each one puts itself first. This page is no exception to the first part. It is an exception to the second: Fly.io is the last entry, so you can read the other seven straight, and each platform gets the same four things in the same order. What it is, what it is good at, what it costs, and how it compares to what you have on Heroku.

Prices are from each platform’s own pricing page as of September 2026, and how each platform’s billing model is shaped decides what those numbers mean at the end of the month. Heroku’s, for reference: Eco $5 a month (512 MB, sleeps after 30 minutes idle), Basic $7 (512 MB, always on), Standard-1X $25 (512 MB), Standard-2X $50 (1 GB).

What Happened to Heroku?

Heroku is in maintenance mode. Its own announcement describes a transition to a sustaining engineering model focused on stability, security, reliability and support, with no change in pricing or service for customers using it today. Two things did change: the emphasis moved to maintaining quality rather than introducing new features, and Enterprise Account contracts are no longer offered to new customers.

That is not a shutdown, and it does not need to be one to matter. The platform you are on has stopped moving, which is a different risk from downtime, and it gives a team a reason to evaluate alternatives on a schedule rather than after an incident. It also means the migration is not urgent, which is worth using: the teams that regret a move are usually the ones that made it in a weekend.

This is the second wave. Heroku ended its free plans on November 28, 2022, and most comparison articles are still written for that moment. The 2026 announcement is the one that affects production workloads.

How the Heroku Alternatives Compare

The table splits into two kinds of platform. Render, Railway, DigitalOcean App Platform, Upsun, Northflank and Fly.io run long-lived processes: web servers, workers, cron jobs, the shape a Heroku app already has. Vercel and Netlify run frontends and short-lived functions, and a Rails or Django app with a job queue does not fit that shape.

Render

What it is. Render is a managed platform with the same nouns as Heroku: web services, background workers, cron jobs, private services, managed Postgres and a Redis-compatible key-value store. It builds from native runtimes for Node, Python, Go, Rust, Ruby and Elixir, or from a Dockerfile. Zero-downtime deploys, preview environments, automatic TLS and private networking are all standard.

Good at. Being the move that requires the least rethinking. A Heroku app with a web process, a worker and a Postgres add-on maps onto Render one to one, which is why it comes up first in nearly every migration thread. It also holds SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001, and offers a HIPAA BAA on higher plans, so it clears procurement for teams that stayed on Heroku for the compliance paperwork.

Pricing. Two parts: a workspace plan and compute. Workspaces are Hobby at $0, Pro at $25 a month, and Scale at $499 a month. Compute is per service, prorated to the second: 0.5 CPU with 512 MB is $7 a month, 1 CPU with 2 GB is $25, and 2 CPU with 4 GB is $85. Managed Postgres starts at $6 a month for 256 MB with 1 GB of storage. The free tier gives a 512 MB service that spins down after 15 minutes of inactivity, with 750 instance hours a month, and a free Postgres that expires 30 days after creation. Bandwidth is 5 GB included, then $0.15 per GB. Render is also offering up to $10K in migration credits to teams moving production infrastructure.

Versus Heroku. Render’s $7 service is the same price as a Heroku Basic dyno for the same 512 MB, and its $25 tier gives 2 GB against Heroku Standard-1X’s 512 MB at the same price. The thing to notice is the workspace fee: a team on Pro pays $25 a month before any compute, which Heroku does not charge. For a solo developer on Hobby that fee is zero and Render is a straightforward win.

Railway

What it is. Railway is a managed platform built around a visual canvas where each service, database and volume in a project is a box you connect to the others. Deploys come from a git push or a Docker image, and everything from a Postgres instance to a cron job is a service in the same project.

Good at. Getting from zero to a running app faster than anything else on this list, and looking good while doing it. Migration threads consistently praise the interface and the git-push workflow, and it is the platform people name when they want the Heroku feeling rather than the Heroku feature list. Billing is per second and stopped services cost nothing.

Pricing. Plans include a usage credit, then you pay for resources. Free is $0 with a $1 monthly credit, Hobby is $5 a month with $5 of usage included, and Pro is $20 a month per workspace with $20 included. Resources are $20 per vCPU per month and $10 per GB of memory per month, so an always-on service with 1 vCPU and 1 GB runs about $30 a month before the plan fee. Volumes are $0.15 per GB. Databases deploy as services inside your project and are billed as the compute and storage they use.

Versus Heroku. The workflow is the closest match to git push heroku main on the list. The pricing model is not: Heroku sells fixed dyno sizes, and Railway meters vCPU and memory, so a 1 GB service costs roughly $30 rather than Heroku’s $50 Standard-2X, but a memory-hungry Rails process that Heroku would cap at a dyno size just costs more on Railway. Databases are the other difference. On Heroku, Postgres is a managed add-on with backups and a support tier. On Railway it is a service you run in your project, and how much of the operational work is done for you is worth confirming before you move a production database.

DigitalOcean App Platform

What it is. App Platform is DigitalOcean’s managed layer on top of its droplets. It builds from your repository using buildpacks or a Dockerfile, runs web services, workers and jobs, and sits alongside DigitalOcean’s managed databases, object storage and the rest of the product line.

Good at. Being the least expensive way to keep an app always on inside a platform that also has everything else. Buildpack-based builds mean a Procfile-style app often deploys without writing a Dockerfile, and if you outgrow App Platform, a droplet with the same managed database is one product over. Developers in migration threads describe it as very close to Heroku and very solid rather than exciting, which is a compliment for infrastructure.

Pricing. Three static sites are included at no charge. Shared-CPU services are $5 a month for 1 vCPU with 512 MiB, $10 or $12 for 1 GiB depending on the transfer allowance, $25 for 2 GiB, and $50 for 2 vCPU with 4 GiB. Builds are included, bandwidth comes with each tier, and overage is $0.02 per GiB. A development database is $7 a month for 512 MiB, and production managed databases are priced separately.

Versus Heroku. The $5 tier is an always-on service for less than a Heroku Eco dyno that sleeps, which for a small app is the whole comparison. At the top end, $50 buys 2 vCPU and 4 GiB against Heroku Standard-2X’s 1 GB at the same price. The developer experience is plainer than Heroku’s, and you will spend a little more time in a dashboard than you did with the Heroku CLI.

Vercel

What it is. Vercel is the company behind Next.js, and its platform is built around frontend frameworks: git-based deploys, a preview URL for every pull request, a global edge network, and serverless functions that scale to zero. Backend code runs as functions rather than as a server process.

Good at. Anything Next.js, and most other frontend frameworks. The preview-per-branch workflow is the best on this list, the framework integration is unmatched because Vercel writes the framework, and static and edge-rendered pages are fast without configuration.

Pricing. Hobby is $0 and, per Vercel’s own FAQ, is for personal, non-commercial use. Pro is $20 a month with $20 of usage credit included, then metered. Compute on Pro is billed as Fluid compute: active CPU from $0.128 an hour, provisioned memory from $0.0106 per GB-hour, and function invocations from $0.60 per million. Enterprise is custom.

Versus Heroku. Vercel is not a Heroku replacement for a Heroku-shaped app, and it does not claim to be. Heroku runs always-on processes: a web dyno, a worker dyno consuming a queue, a scheduler. Vercel runs functions that start on a request and stop when it returns. A Next.js frontend that was on Heroku out of habit will be happier on Vercel. A Rails, Django or Phoenix monolith with Sidekiq or Celery will not fit, and the usual answer is Vercel for the frontend and one of the process platforms on this page for the backend.

Netlify

What it is. Netlify is a platform for static sites and Jamstack applications: git-based deploys, a CDN, forms, identity, serverless functions and edge functions. Like Vercel it runs backend logic as functions rather than long-lived servers.

Good at. Static and content sites, marketing pages, documentation, and frontends that talk to an API hosted elsewhere. Deploy previews per branch are standard, the build system handles most static site generators without configuration, and the platform has been doing this specific job for a long time.

Pricing. Netlify bills in credits. Free is $0 with 300 credits, Personal is $9 a month with 1,000, Pro is $20 a month with 3,000, and Enterprise is custom. A production deploy costs 15 credits, bandwidth costs 20 credits per GB, and function compute costs 10 credits per GB-hour, which puts a GB of bandwidth at roughly $0.13.

Versus Heroku. The same answer as Vercel, more so. Netlify is the right destination for the static or frontend part of what was on Heroku and the wrong one for the backend. If you were on Heroku for a background worker or a persistent server process, Netlify has no equivalent.

Platform.sh (Now Upsun)

What it is. Platform.sh has been renamed Upsun, and its pricing page now redirects there. It is an enterprise-leaning platform built around one idea: every git branch is a full environment, with the app and its databases cloned from production, so a preview environment is a byproduct of branching rather than something you configure. It supports multi-cloud and multi-region deployment and comes from the PHP, Drupal and Symfony world.

Good at. Teams and agencies that run many environments per project and want the data cloned into each one. The branch-per-environment model is the closest thing on this list to Heroku Pipelines and review apps taken seriously, and it is popular where compliance and long-lived staging environments matter more than raw cost.

Pricing. Pay as you go with no plans. A project is €9 a month, a user license is €10 a month, guaranteed CPU is €0.100 per CPU-hour, memory is €0.013 per GB-hour, storage is €0.49 per GB per month and backups are €0.10 per GB. The project fee includes preview environments, 10 GB of egress and build minutes. A single always-on container with 1 CPU and 2 GB works out to roughly €90 a month in resources before the project and user fees. There is a 15-day trial with no card required.

Versus Heroku. This is the platform to look at if what you liked about Heroku was the pipeline rather than the dyno. It is also the most expensive entry here for a small app, with per-user licensing that Heroku does not have, and the pricing is in euros. For a solo developer or a small team with one production app, that overhead is hard to justify. For an agency running twenty client sites with staging environments for each, it can be the point.

Northflank

What it is. Northflank is a platform for services, jobs, databases and GPU workloads that runs either on Northflank’s own infrastructure or inside your own AWS, GCP, Azure or other cloud account. Under the surface it is Kubernetes-shaped: pipelines, templates, preview environments and infrastructure-as-code are all first-class, and it has the broadest feature surface on this list.

Good at. Teams that want more than a Heroku replacement and are willing to learn a bigger platform to get it. Bring-your-own-cloud is the distinctive feature: you keep your existing cloud credits and compliance posture, and Northflank runs the platform on top. GPU workloads are a normal part of the product rather than a bolt-on, as is sandboxed AI code execution, and there is no seat-based pricing.

Pricing. A Sandbox tier at $0 gives 2 services, 1 database and 2 cron jobs, always on with no sleeping, which is a genuine difference from Render’s free tier. Beyond that it is pay as you go, prorated to the second: $0.01667 per vCPU-hour and $0.00833 per GB-hour of memory. Northflank publishes sample sizes: 0.1 vCPU with 256 MB is $2.70 a month, 0.5 vCPU with 1 GB is $12, and 1 vCPU with 2 GB is $24. Egress is $0.06 per GB and disk is $0.15 per GB per month. Enterprise is custom, and BYOC is available on the pay-as-you-go tier.

Versus Heroku. On price, 1 vCPU with 2 GB at $24 sits just under Render’s $25 tier and well under Heroku Standard-2X at $50 for half the memory. On scope, it is the opposite of Heroku’s bet. Heroku succeeded by hiding almost everything. Northflank exposes almost everything, which is what you want if you are going to run a platform team and is more surface area than a two-person team migrating a Rails app needs to learn.

Heroku Alternatives on Fly.io

What it is. Fly.io runs your app as Firecracker microVMs on bare-metal servers that Fly.io operates, in 18 regions. Each Machine is a VM with its own kernel rather than a container sharing one, which is how every app gets hardware isolation as a default rather than an enterprise tier. fly launch scans your repository, detects the framework, and writes a Dockerfile and a fly.toml; fly deploy ships it. It sits between a traditional PaaS and a hyperscaler: managed data services and a push-to-deploy workflow without the orchestration layer AWS asks for.

Good at. Full-stack apps with web processes, background workers and a database, which is to say the shape of a Heroku app. Per-second billing on Machines that stop when traffic stops and start on the next request. Putting an app in a region near its users without building a multi-region architecture to do it. Managed Postgres covers automatic backups and recovery, high availability with automatic failover, performance monitoring, resource scaling, and encryption at rest and in transit. Fly.io holds SOC 2 Type II and publishes controls for teams running HIPAA-compliant applications.

Pricing. Pay as you go on published per-second rates. A shared-cpu-1x Machine with 256 MB is $2.02 a month in Amsterdam, 512 MB is $3.32, and 1 GB is $5.92. Compute is charged only while a Machine runs; a stopped Machine is billed only for its root filesystem at $0.15 per GB over 30 days. Managed Postgres starts at $38 a month plus $0.28 per provisioned GB of storage, which is a higher floor than Render’s $6 or Heroku’s $5 Essential-0, and buys a production cluster rather than a development-tier database with a downtime allowance. All of it can be worked out in advance with the pricing calculator, which takes Machine count and size, regions, volumes, bandwidth and Managed Postgres and returns a monthly figure before you sign up for anything.

Versus Heroku. The concepts map directly. A Procfile becomes a [processes] section in fly.toml, with each group on its own Machines so workers scale independently of the web tier. The release phase becomes release_command under [deploy], which runs before any Machine is updated. Eco-style sleeping becomes auto_stop_machines and auto_start_machines, except the Machine answers the first request rather than making it wait. Review apps come from the superfly/fly-pr-review-apps GitHub Action, one per pull request. On price, 1 GB always on is $5.92 against Heroku Standard-2X at $50. The real differences are on the database side: Managed Postgres is available in fewer regions than compute and does not offer multi-region read replicas.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Heroku shutting down?

No. Heroku’s February 6, 2026 announcement moved the platform to a sustaining engineering model focused on stability, security, reliability and support, with no change for existing customers. What ended is new feature development and Enterprise Account contracts for new customers. Teams that want a platform still being built tend to evaluate Render, Railway or Fly.io, all of which are shipping new capability.

Which Heroku alternative is most like Heroku?

Render, for a full-stack app. It has the same nouns (web services, workers, cron jobs, managed Postgres), builds from native runtimes or Docker, and its $7 service matches a Heroku Basic dyno at the same 512 MB. DigitalOcean App Platform is next, with buildpack-based builds. Fly.io keeps the same concepts under different names, with a Procfile becoming process groups in fly.toml, with per-second billing and hardware isolation.

What is the cheapest Heroku alternative for an always-on app?

For the smallest always-on service: Fly.io is $2.02 a month for a shared-cpu-1x Machine with 256 MB, Northflank $2.70 for 0.1 vCPU with 256 MB, DigitalOcean App Platform $5 for 1 vCPU with 512 MiB, and Render $7 for 0.5 CPU with 512 MB. All four are at or below Heroku’s $7 Basic dyno.

Does Fly.io have a free trial?

Yes. New Fly.io accounts get a trial of two machine hours or seven days, whichever comes first. After that Fly.io bills per second for the resources an app has provisioned, on published rates, and compute is charged only while a Machine runs. A stopped Machine is billed just for its root filesystem at $0.15 per GB over 30 days, which keeps an intermittently used app cheap without a tier that sleeps.

Can I use Vercel or Netlify instead of Heroku?

Yes, if what was on Heroku is a frontend. Both run frontends and short-lived serverless functions rather than always-on processes, so a Next.js or static site will be at home and a Rails, Django or Phoenix app with a background worker will not. The common pattern is Vercel or Netlify for the frontend with the backend on a process platform such as Render, Railway or Fly.io.

Do Heroku alternatives support review apps?

Yes, in different forms. Vercel and Netlify create a preview for every pull request by default. Upsun clones a full environment, including databases, from every git branch. Render has preview environments, with full-stack previews on higher plans. On Fly.io, the superfly/fly-pr-review-apps GitHub Action deploys one app per pull request at a predictable pr-number-owner-repo.fly.dev URL.

How do I work out what a Heroku alternative will cost?

Price your exact configuration rather than comparing headline tiers, because most of these platforms meter resources where Heroku sold fixed dyno sizes. Fly.io publishes a calculator at fly.io/calculator that takes Machine count and size, regions, volumes, bandwidth and Managed Postgres and returns a monthly figure, so you can compare it against your current Heroku invoice before moving anything. Railway, Northflank and Upsun publish per-vCPU and per-GB rates you can multiply out the same way.

Which Heroku alternatives are SOC 2 compliant?

Render holds SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001, with a HIPAA BAA on higher plans. Fly.io holds SOC 2 Type II and documents controls for running HIPAA-compliant applications, without claiming to be a HIPAA-compliant service itself. Northflank states SOC 2 compliance. Attestation status changes, so confirm with each vendor before a procurement review.