Heroku

The original PaaS. Mature, capable, expensive, and still relevant in enterprise.

Key takeaway: Two reasons justify Heroku today: you are already on it and nothing is broken, or your organisation is Salesforce-aligned. For anything greenfield, Render and Railway do the same job for less money with faster feature velocity. Treat an existing Heroku deployment as stable rather than strategic.

Quick facts

CategoryPaaS
PricingPaid
LicenseProprietary
Created2007
GitHub starsclosed
Edge-readyNo
Free tierNo
Egress billingFair

Bundled services: Heroku Postgres Redis Add-on marketplace

What it is

Heroku is the original PaaS that defined the category in 2007. Salesforce-owned since 2011. Free tier removed in 2022, prices have risen. Still mature and capable, Heroku Postgres remains one of the best managed Postgres products. Most teams that did not have a Salesforce-driven reason to stay have migrated to Render, Railway, or Fly.io.

Best for

Existing Heroku deployments with no compelling reason to migrate
Salesforce-aligned organisations
Teams that need Heroku Postgres specifically

When not to pick it

For new projects in 2026, Render or Railway will be cheaper and more developer-friendly. Heroku is in soft decline for greenfield work.

My take

Heroku is mature but expensive and slow on feature velocity. New projects almost never pick it. Existing deployments are stable, but plan for an eventual migration when you replatform.

What still holds up

Heroku defined the category and parts of it have aged well. Heroku Postgres remains one of the better managed database products anywhere, with sane defaults, dependable backups, and follower databases that behave predictably. The add-on marketplace is still the broadest of any PaaS, so obscure requirements often have a one-click answer that newer platforms make you build yourself. Buildpacks are stable, and the twelve-factor discipline they enforce produced applications that port easily, which is quietly the reason Heroku migrations tend to go smoothly. For a Salesforce-aligned organisation, the procurement and support story is already settled and that has value nobody else can match. None of this is nothing. It just no longer adds up to a reason to start something new here, because Render and Railway deliver the same shape with more momentum and a smaller bill.

Managing an existing deployment without panic

A working Heroku app is not an emergency. The free tier removal in 2022 and steady price rises made it expensive rather than broken, and stability has real value. The sensible posture is to stop investing in Heroku-specific mechanics: prefer standard buildpack behaviour over proprietary hooks, keep schema and migrations portable, and avoid new add-ons that have no equivalent elsewhere. Then move at the next natural replatform rather than as a project of its own. When that time comes, Render is the shortest hop for most apps, Railway if you want a nicer interface, Fly.io if you have grown multi-region needs. The one migration mistake worth avoiding is treating the database as the easy part. Heroku Postgres is good enough that its replacement deserves more evaluation than the compute layer does.

Frequently asked questions

Is Heroku still worth using?

For existing deployments that work, staying put is defensible. For new projects, rarely. Render and Railway offer the same platform shape at lower cost with faster feature development, and the migration path off Heroku is well documented precisely because so many teams have taken it. The exception is Salesforce-aligned organisations where the vendor relationship already exists.

Is Heroku free?

No. Free dynos were removed in 2022, so every application runs on a paid plan and the database is billed separately. That change is what pushed most hobbyist and small-team workloads towards Render, Railway, and Fly.io. If you need free hosting today, Render's free instances or Cloudflare Pages are the realistic options.

What should I migrate from Heroku to?

Render for most applications, because the concepts map almost directly and nothing about the app needs to change. Railway if developer experience matters more than a free tier. Fly.io if you have developed multi-region or stateful requirements. Plan the database move carefully, since Heroku Postgres is the piece people consistently underestimate.

Compare Heroku side-by-side

Heroku vs Render →

Similar tools you should also consider

Render

Modern Heroku alternative. Web services, background workers, Postgres, Redis, cron, all integrated.

Read the take →

Railway

Modern PaaS with the cleanest DX in the category. Per-second pricing, Heroku-style git deploys.