Heroku
PaidCloud platform for app deployment
About Heroku
Heroku invented the PaaS-for-developers model that everyone else copied — git push to deploy was radical in 2009. Salesforce acquired it in 2010, and by 2022 the product had stagnated enough that they killed the free tier, causing a massive developer exodus to Railway, Render, and Fly.io. Current pricing: Eco dynos at $5/month (sleep after 30 min inactivity), Basic at $7/month, Standard-1X at $25/month. Postgres add-on starts at $5/month (Mini), Redis at $3/month (Mini). The web and worker dyno model is simple and still functional. The platform works, but the value proposition has eroded significantly. Railway, Render, and Fly.io offer comparable or better DX at lower prices and are actively shipping features. The main r/webdev complaint: Heroku is expensive for what you get in 2024 — $25-50/month for a basic web app that costs $7/month on Render. Buildpacks support most languages automatically. If you're already on Heroku with running apps, migrating has switching costs. Starting new projects there is hard to justify against the alternatives. Salesforce has shown no meaningful sign of investing in the developer platform.
Key Features
Pricing Plans
Eco
- 1000 dyno hours/month
- Sleep after 30min idle
- Deploy from Git
- Basic metrics
Basic
- No sleeping
- 512MB RAM
- Free SSL
- Application metrics
Production
- Horizontal scaling
- Up to 14GB RAM
- Dedicated resources
- App metrics
Pros
- Simplest deployment workflow with git push
- Mature add-ons ecosystem
- Good for prototyping and MVPs
- Managed Postgres is reliable
- Review apps for PR environments
- Well-documented with strong community
Cons
- No free tier since November 2022
- Expensive at scale compared to alternatives
- Performance concerns with shared dynos
- Limited regions US and EU only
- Salesforce ownership creates uncertainty
- Many developers have migrated to Railway or Render
Best For
- rapid prototyping where deployment speed matters more than cost
- teams with existing Heroku expertise and already-running apps
- small web apps with predictable, low traffic on Basic dynos
- organizations with Salesforce enterprise agreements that bundle Heroku
Not Ideal For
- cost-conscious teams (Railway and Render offer similar DX at lower prices)
- high-traffic production apps where dyno scaling is expensive
- new projects in 2024 (better alternatives exist and are actively improving)
Potential Deal Breakers
- no free tier since 2022 (forced a massive developer migration)
- Standard dynos at $25/month are expensive vs Render or Railway equivalents
- Salesforce acquisition has effectively paused meaningful platform development
Data & Privacy
Salesforce-owned PaaS. Application data stays on your dynos. EU region available. No AI training on customer application data. SOC 2 certified. Database exportable via pg_dump.
Who Is This For?
Hands-on tested May 2026
Signup Experience
Email signup with no credit card required for account creation, but a card is needed to deploy beyond the free verification. Eco dynos at $5/mo for multiple apps is a low entry point. Deploy from Git via the Heroku CLI or GitHub integration. Buildpacks detect the language and configure the runtime automatically.
For Home Users
Eco dynos at $5/mo cover hobby projects and side apps. More expensive than Railway or Render for equivalent resources but the Heroku CLI and deployment workflow remain one of the most mature and well-documented in the industry. The free tier removal in 2022 reduced its appeal for personal projects significantly.
For Business Users
Basic at $7/dyno/mo is the entry point for always-on apps. Standard and Performance dynos scale to $500/mo for compute-intensive workloads. Heroku is established and reliable but no longer price-competitive with Railway, Render, or Fly.io for most use cases. The main reasons to stay on Heroku are existing deployments, team familiarity, and the mature add-on ecosystem. New projects are better served by modern alternatives.
Our Verdict
Heroku invented this category and the DX is still decent, but the value proposition has collapsed since Salesforce killed the free tier in 2022. Railway and Render offer the same git-push deployment experience at lower prices and are actively shipping new features. If you're starting fresh, start on one of those instead. If you're already on Heroku, the migration is worth doing once you have the time.