Best Heroku alternatives (2026)
Heroku scores 66/100 in Hosting & deploy. Here are 15 alternatives ranked by the same evidence-based score, with pricing and free tiers side by side. Rankings are never for sale.
| Tool | Score | Free tier | Open source | Pricing |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Heroku (current pick) | 66 | No: no free dynos; Eco is the cheapest plan at $5/mo | No | Eco $5/mo (1,000 shared dyno hours, sleeps after 30 min idle, personal apps only); Basic $7/mo per dyno (always on); Standard-1X $25/mo; Postgres Essential-0 $5/mo (1 GB) |
| Vercel | 86 | Yes: Hobby plan for personal, non-commercial projects | No | Pro $20/seat/mo (includes $20 usage credit) |
| Cloudflare Workers | 82 | Yes: 100,000 requests/day | No | Workers Paid from $5/mo (10M requests included) |
| Railway | 80 | Partial: one-time $5 trial credit (30 days), then a Free plan with $1/mo credit | No | Hobby $5/mo (includes $5 usage) |
| Netlify | 79 | Yes: 300 credits/mo hard limit | No | Personal $9/mo (1,000 credits); Pro from $20/mo (3,000 credits) |
| Render | 79 | Yes: free web services (sleep after 15 min idle, 750 hrs/mo) | No | Paid instances from $7/mo; Pro workspace $25/mo |
| Coolify | 78 | Yes: the self-hosted edition is free with all features (bring your own server) | Yes | Self-hosted free forever (you pay for your own server; Coolify needs 2 CPU cores, 2 GB RAM, 10 GB disk); Coolify Cloud $5/mo for 2 servers + $3/mo per extra server (annual saves 20%) |
| Dokploy | 77 | Yes: the open-source self-hosted edition is free to use (you pay for your own server) | Yes | Self-hosted free (Apache-2.0 outside the /proprietary directory; needs a server with at least 2 GB RAM and 30 GB disk). Dokploy Cloud (managed control panel, you bring the servers): Hobby $4.50/mo per server; Startup from $15/mo with 3 servers included, extra servers $4.50/mo; Enterprise custom. Yearly billing saves 20%; 7-day free trial, no card required |
| DigitalOcean App Platform | 75 | Partial: up to 3 static sites free (1 GiB transfer each); apps with a server start at $5/mo | No | Containers from $5/mo (1 shared vCPU, 512 MiB, 50 GiB transfer); $12/mo for 1 GiB with scaling; dedicated CPU from $29/mo; dev database $7/mo; extra transfer $0.02/GiB |
| Northflank | 72 | Yes: Sandbox tier with 2 free services, 1 free database and 2 free cron jobs, always on (no sleeping) | No | Pay as you go: $0.01667/vCPU-hr + $0.00833/GB-hr; plans from $2.70/mo (0.1 vCPU, 256 MB), $12/mo (0.5 vCPU, 1 GB); egress $0.06/GB; GPUs from $0.80/hr |
| Zeabur | 72 | Yes: free plan with dashboard basics, 1 managed server of your own and 48h log retention | No | Free $0; Dev $5/mo; Pro $19/mo; Team $79/mo with 3 seats (+$24/seat); Dev and Pro have 14 days free; servers and usage billed separately |
| Fly.io | 68 | No: trial only (2 Machine hours or 7 days) | No | Pay as you go; smallest always-on Machine ~$2.19 per 30 days |
| Void | 68 | Yes: the toolkit is free; Cloudflare's Workers free tier applies | Yes | Free and open source (MIT); you pay Cloudflare usage. Self-hosting the team platform needs Workers for Platforms, R2, Postgres, a login provider and a domain |
| OneDeploy | 66 | No free tier found: prepaid, pay-by-the-hour usage | No | Prepaid credit charged by the hour per service, with a fixed monthly cap shown before deploy (live quotes vary by app, plan size, region and provider); daily backups and storage up to 2x disk included; extra storage per GB-month; no per-user fees |
| Lium | 60 | No free tier found; you pay per second for pods | No | Pay-as-you-go, billed per second; prices are set per listing by GPU providers (live at lium.io/pricing; on Oct 24, 2026 listings included H100 80GB from $1.70/hr and 1x B200 at $5.50/hr, cheapest GPUs from $0.30/hr) |
| Glxymesh | 56 | Yes: free plan with a monthly usage allowance and a hard stop (no surprise bill) | No | Free $0 (a month's usage, 5 AI credits; calls stop at the limit); Pro $29/mo (100 AI credits); Team $79/mo (300 AI credits); Enterprise custom |
Why switch from Heroku?
Still one of the simplest git-push platforms with a huge add-on ecosystem, but there is no free plan, Eco dynos sleep, and Salesforce has stopped adding features, so newer hosts give more for the same money. Momentum is scored low for that reason.
The alternatives in detail
Best for: Deploying Next.js and frontend apps with zero config
Best for: Low-cost global APIs and sites at the edge
Best for: Full-stack apps with a database and workers, deployed in minutes
Best for: Static and Jamstack sites with simple serverless needs
Best for: Heroku-style hosting for backends and full-stack apps
Best for: Builders who want Heroku-style git deploys for several apps on one cheap VPS, with no per-app or per-seat fees
Best for: Builders who want Vercel-style git deploys and Compose stacks on one cheap VPS without per-app fees
Best for: Predictable flat-price hosting for a full-stack app plus database, especially if you already use DigitalOcean
Best for: Apps that need always-on free services, preview environments or GPUs, and teams that may move to their own cloud account later
Best for: Vibe coders who want an agent to handle deploys, domains and email in one place without learning a cloud console
Best for: Containerized apps that need multi-region placement
Best for: Shipping Vite apps (React, Vue, Svelte, Solid, TanStack Start) to Cloudflare in one command, and giving a team a guarded place to deploy vibe-coded internal apps
Best for: Small teams that want self-hosted open-source tools (AI, automation, databases, internal apps) without per-seat fees or running servers themselves
Best for: Agents or developers that need short-lived GPUs for fine-tuning, batch jobs or serving a model behind an OpenAI-compatible endpoint, not for hosting a web app
Best for: Developers who want to ship custom MCP tools to Claude, ChatGPT or Cursor users without running servers