The best Heroku alternatives in 2026
Heroku invented git-push simplicity — then killed its free tier in 2022, and in February 2026 Salesforce ended Enterprise sales and moved the platform into maintenance mode. Here is where teams are actually going, and what each option really costs.
The best Heroku alternative depends on what you want to keep. In short:
- Closest Heroku experience → Render — git-push deploys, managed Postgres, flat $25/mo team plan.
- Cheapest simple start → Railway — $5/month including usage, instant databases.
- Global performance and control → Fly.io — edge VMs, pure pay-as-you-go.
- No platform fee at all → Coolify — open-source PaaS on your own ~$10 VPS.
- Own the build, choose the host → Buddy — visual CI/CD with preview environments; deploy to any server or Buddy's hosting, bring your own database.
Why teams look elsewhere
What pushes teams off Heroku
The platform still runs fine — the concerns are its price at scale and where it's headed.
Maintenance mode since Feb 2026
On February 6, 2026 Salesforce ended Heroku Enterprise sales to new customers and shifted the platform to "sustaining engineering" — operational quality over new features.
The free tier died in 2022
Free dynos, Postgres, and Redis ended in November 2022. The floor is now a $5/month Eco dyno that sleeps after 30 minutes of inactivity.
The platform tax compounds
$25/month buys a Standard-1X dyno with 0.5 GB RAM; Performance dynos run $250–$1,500/month. A small production stack commonly lands at $200–400/month before real traffic.
Everything is a metered add-on
Postgres ($5–$24,000/mo across tiers), Key-Value store, Kafka (from $100/mo), metrics — each capability bills separately, which makes the monthly total hard to predict.
A black-box runtime
Buildpacks and dynos abstract the container away entirely. Modern rivals are Docker/OCI-first, which means portable images and no proprietary slug format.
The modern runtime is gated
Fir, Heroku's Kubernetes-based next generation, requires Private Spaces with dynos from $25 to $2,400/month — out of reach of the small teams the classic platform was built for.
The shortlist
7 Heroku alternatives worth trying
Ranked by how well they replace the whole Heroku package — app hosting plus managed data — for a typical product team. The last pick is a different shape on purpose.
Connect a repo, push, get a running service — with managed Postgres, preview environments, and framework auto-detection. New plans (April 2026): free Hobby tier, Pro at a flat $25/month with unlimited team members; compute billed separately.
The slickest of the new PaaS wave: instant Postgres/Redis provisioning, usage-based billing, Hobby from $5/month including $5 of usage. Younger platform, and costs need watching as you scale.
Real VMs (Machines) in 30+ regions, pure pay-as-you-go — the cheapest useful VM is about $2/month. No free tier (plans were deprecated in 2024; new signups get a short trial), and it's more ops-flavored than Heroku ever was.
Shared-CPU services from $5/month, three static apps free, managed Postgres from ~$15/month — inside a full cloud you can grow into. Plainer developer experience than Render or Railway.
Open-source (Apache 2.0) PaaS on your own servers: git deploys, one-click databases, PR preview URLs. Free self-hosted — you pay only the VPS (~$10–25/mo) — or Coolify Cloud manages the control plane for $5/month. You run and secure it yourself.
Microservices, jobs, and databases as containers, pay-as-you-go from ~$2.70/month with no seat fees, and BYOC to run it in your own cloud or Kubernetes. Free sandbox requires a card, and the model takes more learning than a one-app PaaS.
A different shape: a visual CI/CD pipeline with per-PR preview environments, deploying to any VPS or cloud you already have — or to Buddy's Dev Cloud hosting (MicroVM apps + static sites). No managed Postgres; pair it with a managed database. Free tier at €0.
Side by side
Heroku alternatives compared
The dimensions that drive the decision: what a real starting point costs, whether the database is managed for you, and whether you can run on your own infrastructure.
| Platform | Free tier | Entry price | Managed Postgres | Deploy model | Your own infra | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Heroku | ✗ (ended Nov 2022) | Eco $5 (sleeps) · Basic $7 | ✓ from $5 | git push → buildpacks/dynos | ✗ | Staying put on an existing stack |
| Render | ✓ Hobby | Pro $25/mo flat + compute | ✓ | git push → auto-detect / Docker | ✗ | Closest Heroku experience |
| Railway | trial | $5/mo incl. $5 usage | ✓ | git push → Nixpacks / Docker | ✗ | Fastest DX, usage-based |
| Fly.io | short trial | ~$2–5/mo pay-as-you-go | ✓ | Docker/OCI → global Machines | ✗ | Latency-sensitive, multi-region |
| DO App Platform | ✓ 3 static apps | $5/mo shared CPU | ✓ from ~$15 | git push / Docker | DO cloud | Predictable costs in a full cloud |
| Coolify | ✓ open source | $0 + your VPS · Cloud $5/mo | one-click, self-managed | git push → Nixpacks / Docker | ✓ | Killing the platform fee |
| Northflank | ✓ sandbox (card req.) | ~$2.70/mo, no seat fees | ✓ | containers / microservices | ✓ BYOC | Container-first teams |
| Buddy | ✓ €0 | Pro €29/mo | ✗ bring your own | visual pipeline → any target or Dev Cloud | ✓ deploys to your servers | Pipeline + host, decoupled |
Pricing models and free tiers change often — check each vendor for current terms. Compiled July 2026 from each vendor's official pricing pages.
Official pages: Heroku pricing · Render plans · Railway · Fly.io · DigitalOcean · Coolify · Northflank · Heroku Enterprise EOS coverage
The Buddy angle
Two ways to keep the simplicity
Heroku's magic is a black box with a meter on every part. A pipeline you can see keeps the one-command feel — and lets you deploy to servers you choose.
Heroku: push, then the meter runs
black boxOne command in, a proprietary slug out — and every moving part around it is a separately metered add-on.
Buddy: a pipeline you can see
visual CI/CDActions click together and run in the open. Pipelines deploy to servers you own or to Buddy's Dev Cloud, and environments give every pull request its own URL. Bring the managed database of your choice.
A fair call
When Heroku is still the right choice
Migration has real costs — for some teams, staying is the sensible move.
Staying on Heroku is fine if…
- A mission-critical stack already runs there — Salesforce says existing customers see no changes to pricing, billing, or service.
- You depend on Shield / Private Spaces for HIPAA or PCI compliance the add-on ecosystem already handles.
- Your team has zero appetite for ops and the current bill is acceptable.
- You hold an Enterprise contract — renewals are honored even after the February 2026 End of Sale.
Consider an alternative if…
- You're starting something new — building on a platform in sustaining-engineering mode is a bet against its roadmap.
- You pay $200+/month for under 1 GB of RAM — Render, Railway, or DigitalOcean deliver multiples of that for less.
- You want your own servers in the loop — Coolify, Northflank (BYOC), or Buddy's pipeline-to-your-VPS model.
- You need the runtime to evolve (ARM, GPU, containers-first) — that investment now happens elsewhere.
Common questions
Heroku alternatives — common questions
What happened to Heroku in 2026?
On February 6, 2026, Salesforce ended Heroku Enterprise sales to new customers (End of Sale) and moved the platform to "sustaining engineering" — maintaining quality and operations rather than building new features. Existing customers, including self-serve credit-card accounts, continue with no changes to pricing, billing, or service, and Enterprise renewals are honored.
Is Heroku shutting down?
No. Salesforce has stated there is no change for existing Heroku customers, and the platform keeps running. What changed is the trajectory: new Enterprise contracts ended in February 2026 and new feature development has been scaled back, so teams starting new projects are factoring in the platform's maintenance-mode status.
What is the cheapest way off Heroku?
Coolify — an open-source, self-hostable PaaS — is free under Apache 2.0; you pay only for a VPS (roughly $10–25/month) and get Heroku-style git deploys, one-click databases, and PR preview URLs. Among managed options, Railway starts at $5/month including usage, and a small DigitalOcean App Platform service costs about $5/month.
What is the closest drop-in replacement for Heroku?
Render. It keeps the Heroku workflow — connect a repo, push, get a running service — with managed Postgres, preview environments, and framework auto-detection. Since April 23, 2026 its Pro plan is a flat $25/month with unlimited team members (compute billed separately), replacing the old $19-per-user pricing.
Can Buddy replace Heroku?
Partly, and deliberately so. Buddy covers the build-and-ship side: a visual CI/CD pipeline, preview environments with a URL per pull request, and Dev Cloud hosting for apps (MicroVM) and static sites — or deployment to any VPS or cloud you already have. It does not offer a managed Postgres, so you pair it with a managed database such as DigitalOcean, Neon, or Supabase. Teams choose it when they want to own the pipeline and pick the host, instead of renting an all-in-one black box.
How hard is it to migrate a Heroku Postgres database?
Straightforward for most apps: pg_dump from Heroku Postgres and pg_restore into any managed Postgres (Render, DigitalOcean, Railway, Fly Postgres, Neon, Supabase). Config vars map one-to-one to environment variables on every alternative. The riskiest part is usually add-on-specific features and cutover timing, not the data itself.
Should I wait for Heroku Fir instead of migrating?
Fir is Heroku's Kubernetes-based next-generation runtime (OCI images, AMD64 and ARM), but it requires Private Spaces and its dynos run $25 to $2,400 per month — enterprise territory. With the platform in sustaining-engineering mode since February 2026, most small and mid-sized teams evaluating Fir conclude the modern runtimes at Render, Fly.io, or Northflank deliver the same benefits without the gate.