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Heroku vs Railway

What the same app costs on each, how they bill, and where each one gets expensive.

prices checked 29 September 2026 · USD, without VAT

Monthly cost in 4 sample setups

SetupHerokuRailway
Hobby API1 × 0.5 vCPU / 512 MB, 20 GB egress, 10 % load$7$7
App with Postgres1 × 1 vCPU / 1 GB, Postgres 1 GB RAM, 5 GB, 100 GB egress, 25 % load$59$32.75
Small SaaS2 × 2 vCPU / 4 GB, Postgres 4 GB RAM, 50 GB, 500 GB egress, 25 % load$1,000*$177.50
Staging, 8 hours a day1 × 0.5 vCPU / 512 MB, Postgres 1 GB RAM, 5 GB, 10 GB egress, 8 h a day, 10 % load$16$15.25

* Without the database or disk: no matching plan in our table.

Of our 4 sample setups, 3 can be priced on both; Heroku is cheaper in 0, Railway in 2, 1 is a tie. Click a setup to open it in the calculator and change the numbers.

In short

Heroku charges per dyno whatever the load; Railway charges for what the app uses. Small apps usually cost less on Railway, while Heroku's Essential Postgres plans are cheap for small databases. Heroku has been in sustaining engineering since February 2026, one reason teams are planning a move.

Heroku

  • Dynos sold by memory: Basic $7 (0.5 GB, one dyno only), Standard-1X $25, Standard-2X $50 (1 GB), Performance-M $250 (2.5 GB).
  • Eco: $5 for a pool of 1,000 dyno hours; Eco dynos sleep after 30 minutes idle.
  • Postgres Essential from $5 (1 GB of storage); Essential-1 is $9 (10 GB).
  • Bandwidth is soft-limited at 2 TB per app a month.
  • In sustaining engineering since February 2026; no new Enterprise contracts.

Railway

  • Usage-based: $20 per vCPU-month and $10 per GB-month of memory actually used, billed per second.
  • Hobby costs $5 a month and includes $5 of usage; Pro costs $20 and includes $20.
  • A free plan gives $1 of usage a month, capped at 1 vCPU and 0.5 GB of memory per service.
  • Idle services can sleep and cost nothing while asleep; the next request wakes them.
  • Egress $0.05 per GB from the first gigabyte; volumes $0.15 per GB-month, up to 5 GB on Hobby.
  • Postgres runs as an ordinary service at the same rates. Replicas can't use volumes.

More comparisons

Sources

Prices were read from these pages on 29 September 2026.