Heroku alternatives: 11 backend and app hosting platforms compared
People searching for a Heroku alternative are usually paying $25 or more per dyno for small apps, running into the Eco dyno's sleep behaviour, or reacting to Heroku's February 2026 move to a sustaining engineering model with no new features planned. Most go to a like-for-like container host such as Render, Railway or Fly.io, or split the app into a frontend host and a managed database.
Short answer: The first three alternatives to Heroku in our backend and app hosting platform ranking are Render, Railway and Fly.io. Places 1 to 3 go to challengers, vendors outside the best-known brands in a category, wherever the category has them; the established names follow from place 4 in their ranked order. Choose Render if you want the nearest equivalent of dynos, Procfile processes and add-on Postgres. All 11 alternatives below are ranked products from Best Backend and App Hosting Platforms in 2026, and each says where it differs from Heroku.
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Pricing: Dyno tiers from Eco to Performance, published; add-ons billed separately
Established in: United States
Built for: Teams that want git push deploys and a managed Postgres they can dump
Not for: Teams that want one flat price covering app and database
01
Why buyers look past Heroku
01
Dyno prices step up in large jumps
On the pricing page checked on 23 October 2026, Eco is $5 a month, Basic $7, Standard-1X $25, Standard-2X $50 and Performance-M $250 per dyno. Preboot and zero-downtime deploys only start at Standard, and autoscaling at Performance, so a small team that needs zero-downtime deploys pays $25 per process before adding a database.
02
The cheap tiers sleep or are personal only
Eco dynos sleep after 30 minutes of inactivity and are limited to personal accounts, which the Dev Center describes as apps outside a Heroku Team. The $5 plan gives a shared pool of 1,000 dyno hours. A client project or a team app therefore starts at Basic or Standard, and Postgres is billed separately from $5 for Essential-0.
03
The platform is now in maintenance mode
Heroku's own post of 6 February 2026 says it is moving to a sustaining engineering model focused on stability, security, reliability and support, with emphasis on maintaining quality rather than introducing new features. Credit-card customers see no change in pricing, but new Enterprise Account contracts are no longer offered. Heroku is part of Salesforce, whose footer carries the copyright.
Free and Starter plan; Professional per developer, published
Reactive TypeScript backend where queries update live
you are rewriting a realtime TypeScript app and not lifting a Rails or Django codebase as it is
#4
03
What each one does differently
1
Render
United States · Free instance types; workspace tiers plus per-instance compute, published
The closest match in shape: web services, background workers, cron jobs, Docker deploys and managed Postgres, with a published guide that maps Heroku dynos to Render instances. Pro is $25 a month plus compute, and a 512 MB instance is $7. Free web services spin down after 15 idle minutes and free Postgres expires after 30 days.
Switch from Heroku if you want the nearest equivalent of dynos, Procfile processes and add-on Postgres.
United States · Free plan after a 30-day trial; Hobby and Pro minimums plus usage, published
Bills by usage (memory and CPU per second) against a plan minimum: Hobby $5, Pro $20, each including the same amount as credit. Deploys from GitHub, Dockerfile or CLI, and runs Postgres from a Docker image you operate as a service in the project. The free plan is a 30-day trial, then $1 a month.
Switch from Heroku if you prefer paying for measured usage over fixed dyno sizes and like a visual project canvas.
United States · No platform fee; per-second resource billing, published; 7-day trial
No platform fee; Machines are billed by the second, from $2.19 a month for a 256 MB shared CPU, and it runs containers in chosen regions through the fly CLI and fly.toml. Managed Postgres starts at $38 a month. The free trial covers 2 VM hours or 7 days, and support plans cost extra.
Switch from Heroku if you want containers close to users in several regions and are comfortable configuring them.
Singapore · Free plan; Pro and Team tiers plus compute add-ons, published
A Postgres-first backend (database, auth, storage, Edge Functions) rather than a place to run a long-lived web process. Free covers 2 active projects that pause after a week idle, Pro is $25 a month plus compute. The code is Apache-2.0 and can be self-hosted with Docker.
Switch from Heroku if Heroku Postgres plus add-ons was mostly serving as your backend and you want auth and APIs on top.
Israel · Free plan; Pro per project with usage add-ons, published
An open-source (BSD-3-Clause) backend with auth, databases, storage, Functions and Sites hosting under one subscription, self-hostable with Docker or Helm. Free projects freeze when they hit a limit, while Pro keeps running and charges overage. Dedicated databases start at $10 a month. It does not run arbitrary Procfile-style workers.
Switch from Heroku if you want one open-source backend you can later move onto your own servers.
United States · Free Hobby plan for personal use; Pro per seat plus usage credit, published
Built around frontend frameworks and serverless functions, not dyno-style processes. Hobby is $0 but for personal, non-commercial use; Pro is $20 a month with $20 of usage credit and a $20 developer seat. There is no included managed Postgres on the pricing page we read, so the database comes from elsewhere.
Switch from Heroku if your Heroku app is mainly a Next.js or similar web frontend with light server code.
United States · Free plan with a credit cap; Personal and Pro tiers with credits, published
Frontend and serverless platform with Git deploys, Netlify Functions, Blobs and a Netlify Database. Billing is in credits: Free has 300 a month, Personal costs $9 for 1,000, Pro is $20 with unlimited members. Production deploys cost 15 credits each. Long-running workers are not what it is built for.
Switch from Heroku if you are moving a site with a few functions and want a cheap tier with preview deploys.
United States · Free plan with build limits; Functions metered as Workers requests
Static hosting with Git builds, and server code as Pages Functions billed as Workers requests (100,000 a day on the free plan). Free builds are capped at 500 a month with one at a time. Cloudflare's own docs now advise starting new projects on Workers, so treat Pages as the lower-cost frontend option.
Switch from Heroku if you serve mostly static or edge-rendered pages and want near-zero hosting cost.
United States · Free Spark plan; Blaze pay-as-you-go at Google Cloud rates, published
Google's backend suite: Firestore, Authentication, Cloud Functions and App Hosting for Next.js and Angular, with the Spark plan at no cost and Blaze pay-as-you-go. App Hosting bills Cloud Run, Cloud Build and Artifact Registry at Google Cloud rates. Data is in Firestore or Realtime Database, not Postgres.
Switch from Heroku if you are rebuilding around a document database and mobile clients and accept Google Cloud billing.
United States · Pay per build minute, storage and transfer, published; new-account credits
AWS-hosted Git deploys for SSR and single-page frameworks. Standard build minutes cost $0.01 after 1,000 free a month, data served $0.15 per GB after 15 GB, and SSR requests $0.30 per million. A backend means assembling Cognito, AppSync, DynamoDB, Lambda and S3, each billed on its own pricing page.
Switch from Heroku if you already run on AWS and prefer metered billing over fixed dyno prices.
United States · Free and Starter plan; Professional per developer, published
A reactive database with TypeScript server functions, auth, file storage and crons, not a general container host. Free & Starter is pay as you go, Professional $25 per developer a month. The backend is on GitHub under the Functional Source License and can be self-hosted. It replaces both app server and database for the apps it fits.
Switch from Heroku if you are rewriting a realtime TypeScript app and not lifting a Rails or Django codebase as it is.
Staying on Heroku is reasonable when the app is a conventional Rails, Django, Node or Java service on Standard dynos, the team already relies on Heroku Postgres and add-ons, and nothing on the roadmap needs a new platform feature. Heroku states that credit-card pricing, billing and core platform functions are unchanged, and the Postgres backups use native pg_dump, so the exit stays open. Stay longer if you use Heroku Connect or AppLink with Salesforce, because none of the alternatives list an equivalent. The cost of staying is that the vendor has said it will maintain the platform, not extend it.
05
What moving off Heroku involves
01
Map processes and add-ons before choosing a host
A Heroku app is described by its Procfile process types, config vars, buildpack and attached add-ons. Render's migration guide maps web dynos to web services, worker dynos to background workers, the Heroku Scheduler to cron jobs and config vars to environment variables. List each process and each add-on first; every one becomes a separate service or bill on the new platform.
02
Move the database with pg_dump and plan the cut-over
Heroku PGBackups produces custom-format pg_dump files that can be restored into any PostgreSQL server, and the Dev Center advises PGBackups only for moderately loaded databases up to 20 GB, because larger ones can time out. Rehearse a restore on the target, pick a short write freeze, then switch DNS. Docker-based apps need less change than buildpack apps because the image moves as it is.
06
Questions about replacing Heroku
6 answers
Is Heroku shutting down?
Not according to Heroku's own post of 6 February 2026. It says Heroku remains an actively supported, production-ready platform and is moving to a sustaining engineering model, meaning stability, security, reliability and support rather than new features.
It also says new Enterprise Account contracts are no longer offered, while existing ones are honoured.
Does Heroku still have a cheap or free tier?
The dyno list on the pricing page starts at Eco for $5 a month, with a pool of 1,000 dyno hours shared across personal apps. Eco dynos sleep after 30 minutes of inactivity.
Heroku Postgres Essential-0 is $5 a month. The page we read lists no dyno at $0, so low-traffic hobby apps cost at least $10 with a database.
Which alternative is closest to Heroku?
Render is the nearest in structure, with web services, workers, cron jobs, Docker deploys and Postgres, and it publishes a Heroku migration guide.
Railway and Fly.io run the same kinds of processes with usage-based billing. Supabase, Appwrite and Convex replace the backend part only, and Vercel, Netlify and Cloudflare Pages replace a frontend.
Can I get my Heroku Postgres data out?
Yes. Heroku PGBackups uses the native pg_dump tool, so a dump can be restored into other PostgreSQL installations, and pg:push and pg:pull copy to a local database.
The documentation warns that backups of databases above 20 GB or under heavy load can time out, so test before migration day.
Will an alternative cost less than Heroku?
Depends on size. A 512 MB Render instance is $7 a month and Fly.io's smallest Machine is $2.19, against $7 for Heroku Basic.
Railway and Fly.io bill on usage, so a bursty app can cost more than a fixed dyno. Compare a month of your real memory, bandwidth and database needs on each calculator before committing.
Can I keep using Heroku with Salesforce?
Heroku markets AppLink and Heroku Connect for integration with Salesforce clouds, and its own pages describe Heroku as part of Salesforce. None of the alternatives above list an equivalent Salesforce connector, so teams with those integrations should check what replaces them before moving.
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Sources
Checked 23 October 2026
Heroku pricing: Eco $5, Basic $7, Standard-1X $25, Standard-2X $50, Performance-M $250; Eco sleeps after 30 minutes and is personal only; Postgres Essential-0 $5; Salesforce copyright and San Francisco address.
Heroku blog: An Update on Heroku: 6 February 2026 move to sustaining engineering, no new Enterprise Account contracts, no change for credit-card customers.
Founder of The Knowledge Engineers and of 2 Steps Ahead, an AI search visibility agency. Editorially responsible for every page on this site; research and drafting are AI-assisted.
Written, edited and fact-checked by Sebastiaan Smits. Last reviewed
23 October 2026. How we review.
