Alternatives to
9 Best Heroku Alternatives in 2026
The best Heroku alternatives depend on whether you prioritize cost, control, or a different workflow.
- Reviewed
- Sep 2026
- Open source
- 4
- Self-hosted
- 4
What you are leaving
Heroku at a glance
- Status
- Free product plans discontinued in November 2022; inactive accounts deleted
- Pricing model
- Paid dynos and add-ons only; free dyno hours ended
- Deployment
- Managed cloud platform
- Open source
- No - proprietary Salesforce product
- Self-host
- No
- Free tier
- No - discontinued in 2022
- Category
- Platform as a service
- Migration
- Procfile and environment variables carry over to most alternatives
- Official successor
- None - Heroku moved to paid plans only
- Owner
- Salesforce
Compare at a glance
Heroku alternatives compared
Short facts side by side. Filter by what matters to your team, then open any row for the full decision brief.
| # | Product | Overlap | Substitutability | Free? | Starting price | Self-host | Open source | Migration | Details |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 01 | Render | Git-push deploys, managed databases and background jobs | Full replacement | Yes | $7/month | No | No | Easy | |
| 02 | Railway | Git-push deploys, managed databases and background jobs | Full replacement | No | $5/month | No | No | Easy | |
| 03 | Fly.io | Container hosting and managed databases | Mostly replaces | No | $1.94/month | No | No | Moderate | |
| 04 | Coolify | App deployment, databases and background jobs | Mostly replaces | Yes | — | Yes | Yes | Moderate | |
| 05 | Dokku | Git-push deploys, buildpacks and add-ons | Mostly replaces | Yes | — | Yes | Yes | Moderate | |
| 06 | Northflank | Container hosting, jobs and managed databases | Mostly replaces | Yes | $2.70/month | No | No | Moderate | |
| 07 | Platform.sh | App hosting, environments and managed services | Partial replacement | No | — | No | No | Hard | |
| 08 | Appwrite | Backend services, databases and functions | Narrow overlap | Yes | $10/month | Yes | Yes | Hard | |
| 09 | Supabase | Postgres, auth and storage | Narrow overlap | Yes | $25/month | Yes | Yes | Hard |
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Frequently asked
Heroku alternatives FAQ
- Did Heroku discontinue its free tier?
- Yes. Salesforce announced that Heroku would discontinue free product plans and delete inactive accounts, ending the free dyno hours that hobby projects had relied on for years. Heroku's free tier was removed in November 2022, so any app that used free dynos had to move to a paid plan or migrate elsewhere.
- What is the best Heroku alternative?
- Render and Railway are the closest like-for-like replacements, with similar git-push deployment and managed databases plus a free or low-cost entry point. Fly.io is the best option if you want to run containers close to your users, and Coolify or Dokku are the best choices if you want to self-host a Heroku-style platform on your own server.
- Is there a free Heroku alternative?
- Yes. Render has a free Hobby tier, Railway includes $5 of monthly usage credits on its $5 Hobby plan after a 30-day trial, and Fly.io lets you start for free with pay-as-you-go pricing. Coolify and Dokku are open source and free forever if you supply your own server, which usually costs a few dollars a month.
- How hard is it to migrate off Heroku?
- Most apps move without code changes if they already use a Procfile and environment variables. The work is usually in the details: exporting Heroku Postgres, recreating add-ons such as Redis and scheduled jobs, and reconfiguring buildpacks or Dockerfiles. Render, Railway and Northflank all publish migration guides for Heroku apps.
- What should I check when replacing Heroku?
- Check how each platform handles buildpacks versus Docker, because that decides how much of your existing setup you can keep. Then compare managed database and Redis offerings, since add-ons are where Heroku apps are most tightly coupled. Finally, look at pricing at your real usage level, because free tiers on the alternatives are designed for hobby projects and production workloads cost more.
Switcher Reports
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Editorial method
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