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Heroku alternatives

What the same app costs on Heroku and on six other platforms, and the steps to move it.

prices checked 29 September 2026 · USD, without VAT

Heroku and the alternatives, 4 sample setups

SetupHerokuRailwayRenderFly.ioDO App PlatformDO DropletHetzner Cloud
Hobby API1 × 0.5 vCPU / 512 MB, 20 GB egress, 10 % load$7$7$9.25$4.09$5$6$14.09
App with Postgres1 × 1 vCPU / 1 GB, Postgres 1 GB RAM, 5 GB, 100 GB egress, 25 % load$59$32.75$59.45$48.10$25.15$24$23.59
Small SaaS2 × 2 vCPU / 4 GB, Postgres 4 GB RAM, 50 GB, 500 GB egress, 25 % load$1,000*$177.50$313.95—$160.90——
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$27.95$40.83$20.15$12$14.09

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

Why people are looking

In February 2026 Heroku moved to "sustaining engineering" and stopped selling new Enterprise contracts. It says prices are not changing, and apps keep running, but a platform in maintenance mode is a reason to have an exit plan. Heroku blog

The alternatives at a glance

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.

Render

  • Fixed monthly instances from $7 (0.5 CPU, 512 MB) to $175 (4 CPU, 8 GB), billed by the second.
  • Free instances sleep after 15 minutes idle; a workspace gets 750 free instance hours a month.
  • Hobby workspace (one seat): 5 GB of bandwidth, then $0.15 per GB. Pro: $25 a month with 25 GB.
  • Postgres from $6 (256 MB) or $19 (1 GB) plus $0.30 per GB of storage; free Postgres expires after 30 days.
  • Disks $0.25 per GB-month; a service with a disk can't scale to several instances.

Fly.io

  • Machines billed per second while running; from 1 October 2026 the smallest (shared CPU, 256 MB) is $2.19 a month.
  • No free allowance for new customers; the trial is 2 machine hours or 7 days.
  • Egress $0.02 per GB in North America and Europe; a dedicated IPv4 address is $2 a month.
  • Managed Postgres from $38 (1 GB) plus $0.28 per GB of storage.
  • Volumes $0.15 per GB-month, one per machine; stopped machines pay $0.15 per GB of root filesystem.

DigitalOcean App Platform

  • Containers from $5 (1 shared vCPU, 512 MiB, one container only); $12 for a 1 GiB size that can scale.
  • Each container brings outbound transfer (50 GiB on the $5 size), pooled across the team; then $0.02 per GiB.
  • Three static sites are free.
  • Managed PostgreSQL from $15.15 (1 GiB of memory, 10 GiB of storage).
  • No persistent disks for app containers.

DigitalOcean Droplet

  • Basic Droplets from $4 (1 vCPU, 512 MiB, 10 GiB, 500 GiB of transfer) to $24 (2 vCPU, 4 GiB).
  • Transfer overage $0.01 per GiB; volumes $0.10 per GiB-month.
  • Per-second billing since January 2026, capped at 672 hours a month; powered-off Droplets are still billed.
  • You run the server yourself: OS, updates, backups and the database.

Hetzner Cloud

  • EU CPX servers from $13.49 (1 vCPU, 2 GB) with 20 TB of traffic; overage $1.20 per TB.
  • The cheaper CX and CAX lines are shown as unavailable at the moment.
  • Primary IPv4 $0.60 a month; IPv6 is free.
  • Prices rose on 1 April and 15 June 2026; US locations cost more and include 1–3 TB of traffic.
  • You run the server yourself: OS, updates, backups and the database.

Moving an app off Heroku

  1. Take stock. List your process types, add-ons, scheduled jobs and config vars (heroku config --app your-app).
  2. Back up the database. heroku pg:backups:capture --app your-app, then heroku pg:backups:download --app your-app, and restore the dump into the new database with pg_restore.
  3. Build on the new platform. If it can't build your app as it is, add a Dockerfile: Railway, Render, Fly.io and DigitalOcean App Platform can all deploy from one.
  4. Run both for a while. Point a test domain at the new app, lower your DNS TTL, then switch and keep Heroku running until traffic has moved.
  5. Check the bill. Price your real setup in the calculator before you commit.

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