March 29, 2026 (2w ago)
Written by Temps Team
Last updated March 29, 2026 (2w ago)
Heroku entered "sustaining engineering" mode in February 2026, meaning no new features, no Enterprise contract sales, and reduced investment going forward (SiliconANGLE, 2026). For the roughly 13 million applications still running on the platform (The Register, 2024), the clock is ticking. The global PaaS market reached $173.4 billion in 2024 and is projected to hit $834.3 billion by 2032 (Fortune Business Insights) -- there's no shortage of places to land.
This guide compares nine Heroku alternatives across pricing, features, migration difficulty, and long-term viability. We tested each platform hands-on and ranked them by how well they replace what Heroku used to do best: simple git push deployments with managed infrastructure.
[INTERNAL-LINK: self-hosted deployment platforms → /blog/7-best-self-hosted-deployment-platforms-2026]
TL;DR: Heroku stopped active development in February 2026. The best replacement depends on your priorities: Temps for self-hosted deployments with built-in observability (~$6/mo on Hetzner), Railway for the closest managed experience, and Dokku for zero-friction Heroku buildpack migration. All nine alternatives in this guide cost less than Heroku's $25/mo Eco plan.
| Platform | Type | Free Tier | Starting Price | Heroku Buildpacks | Git Push Deploy | Built-in Monitoring | Best For |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Temps | Self-hosted | Yes (self-host) | ~$6/mo (VPS) | Via Docker | Yes | Analytics, errors, replay, uptime | All-in-one self-hosted |
| Railway | Managed | Trial credits | $5/mo + usage | No | Yes | Basic metrics | Closest Heroku DX |
| Render | Managed | Yes (limited) | $7/mo | No | Yes | Basic metrics | Static + web services |
| Fly.io | Managed | Yes (limited) | ~$3/mo+ usage | No | CLI deploy | Basic metrics | Edge/global deploys |
| Coolify | Self-hosted | Yes (self-host) | ~$5/mo (VPS) | No | Yes | No | App marketplace |
| Dokku | Self-hosted | Yes (self-host) | ~$5/mo (VPS) | Yes (native) | Yes | No | Heroku migration |
| Dokploy | Self-hosted | Yes (self-host) | ~$5/mo (VPS) | Via Railpack | Yes | No | AI-assisted deploys |
| DO App Platform | Managed | Yes (limited) | $5/mo | Via buildpacks | Yes | Basic metrics | DigitalOcean users |
| Cloud Run | Managed | Yes (generous) | Pay-per-use | No | Via Cloud Build | GCP monitoring | Scale-to-zero |
The "Starting Price" column reflects the minimum for a single small app. Real costs scale with traffic, team size, and add-on services. Self-hosted options list VPS cost only -- the software itself is free.
Salesforce announced in February 2026 that Heroku would enter sustaining engineering mode, ending new feature development and halting Enterprise subscription sales (SiliconANGLE, 2026). This wasn't a surprise. Heroku eliminated its free tier in November 2022 and has barely shipped meaningful features since. Developer sentiment had been declining for years.
Citation Capsule: Salesforce moved Heroku into sustaining engineering mode in February 2026, ending new feature development and Enterprise contract sales (SiliconANGLE, 2026). Roughly 13 million applications still run on the platform (The Register, 2024), making this one of the largest PaaS migration events in recent history.
Heroku's Eco dynos cost $5/mo but sleep after 30 minutes of inactivity. Basic dynos run $7/mo per app. The Professional tier starts at $25/mo per dyno, and that's before adding Heroku Postgres ($9-200/mo), Heroku Redis ($15-750/mo), or any marketplace add-ons. A typical production app with a database, background workers, and Redis easily costs $80-150/month.
[ORIGINAL DATA] We've seen teams paying $200-400/mo for what amounts to two web dynos, a worker, PostgreSQL, and Redis. The same setup on a $12/mo Hetzner VPS runs without restrictions.
While Heroku stood still, competitors shipped preview environments, edge deployments, built-in CI/CD, and container orchestration. The 2025 Stack Overflow Developer Survey found that Docker adoption reached 71.1% among professional developers -- a 17-point increase in a single year. Developers moved toward containers. Heroku never followed.
What does this mean for you? If you're still on Heroku, the question isn't whether to migrate. It's where.
[INTERNAL-LINK: migration guide → /blog/migrate-from-vercel-to-self-hosted]
Temps replaces six paid SaaS tools with a single Rust binary: deployments, web analytics, session replay, error tracking, uptime monitoring, and managed databases. A mid-stage team typically spends $300-600/month on equivalent managed tooling (MassiveGRID, 2026). Temps on a Hetzner CX22 costs about $6/mo.
Citation Capsule: Temps bundles deployment, analytics, error tracking, session replay, uptime monitoring, and managed databases into a single self-hosted binary. Equivalent managed SaaS tooling costs $300-600/month for a mid-stage team (MassiveGRID, 2026), while Temps runs on a ~$6/mo Hetzner VPS.
Most Heroku refugees land on another managed PaaS -- Railway, Render, Fly.io -- only to discover they've traded one set of bills for another. You're still paying per-seat, per-dyno, per-gigabyte. Temps breaks that cycle entirely: you own the server, you own the data, and there are no per-seat fees.
The deployment workflow feels familiar. Connect a Git repo, push code, get a preview deployment. Zero-downtime rollouts happen automatically via a Pingora-based reverse proxy (the same technology Cloudflare uses). But here's what no other self-hosted PaaS offers: built-in analytics, session replay, and error tracking without bolting on Plausible, FullStory, and Sentry separately.
| Tool Category | Managed SaaS Cost | With Temps |
|---|---|---|
| Deployment platform | $25-100/mo | Included |
| Web analytics (Plausible) | $9/mo | Included |
| Error tracking (Sentry) | $26/mo | Included |
| Session replay (FullStory) | $99/mo | Included |
| Uptime monitoring (Pingdom) | $15/mo | Included |
| Database hosting | $15-50/mo | Included |
| Total | $189-299/mo | ~$6/mo |
You'll need to containerize your app or rely on Nixpacks auto-detection. Procfiles aren't supported directly, but most Node.js, Python, and Go apps deploy without configuration changes.
[INTERNAL-LINK: deploy guide → /blog/deploy-nextjs-with-temps]
Railway is the most Heroku-like managed PaaS, with a polished dashboard, instant PostgreSQL provisioning, and usage-based pricing starting at $5/month. The platform raised $30 million in Series A funding in 2024 (Railway Blog), signaling strong financial backing for continued development.
Citation Capsule: Railway raised $30 million in Series A funding in 2024 (Railway Blog) and offers usage-based pricing starting at $5/month for the Pro plan. Its UI and workflow most closely replicate Heroku's managed experience among modern PaaS alternatives.
If you liked Heroku's simplicity and don't want to manage servers, Railway is the obvious pick. Spin up a project, connect GitHub, deploy. Need Postgres? One click. Redis? One click. The experience is almost identical to Heroku circa 2018 -- except Railway is actively shipping features.
Pricing is usage-based: you pay for compute ($0.000463/vCPU/minute) and memory ($0.000231/GB/minute) plus a $5/mo Pro plan fee. A small web app with a database typically runs $8-15/month. That's cheaper than Heroku's equivalent, though costs can climb unpredictably with traffic spikes.
Railway auto-detects most frameworks. Procfile support is limited, but railway.toml configuration is straightforward. Database migration requires a pg_dump and pg_restore.
Render offers a genuine free tier with 750 hours of web service runtime per month, making it the best option for developers testing ideas before committing budget. Render has served over 1 million developers since launch and processes billions of requests monthly (Render, 2025).
Citation Capsule: Render provides 750 free hours of web service runtime per month and has served over 1 million developers since launch (Render, 2025). Paid web services start at $7/month, making it one of the most affordable managed Heroku alternatives.
Render is where most Heroku free-tier refugees already landed in 2022. The workflow is familiar: connect a repo, set environment variables, deploy. Render's free tier services spin down after 15 minutes of inactivity (sound familiar?), but the paid Starter plan at $7/mo keeps apps running 24/7.
Database pricing is reasonable -- Render PostgreSQL starts at $7/mo for 256MB RAM. Background workers, cron jobs, and private services are all supported. The dashboard is clean, and the documentation is excellent.
Render supports Dockerfiles and auto-detects many frameworks. Add a render.yaml to define services, databases, and environment variables. Most Heroku apps port in under an hour.
Fly.io runs applications on bare-metal servers in 35+ regions worldwide, making it the strongest choice for latency-sensitive applications that need to be close to users. The edge computing market is projected to reach $232.87 billion by 2034 (Precedence Research, 2025), and Fly.io is positioned squarely in that trend.
Citation Capsule: Fly.io operates in 35+ regions worldwide on bare-metal servers (Fly.io, 2026) and offers a free tier that includes 3 shared-cpu VMs. The edge computing market is projected to reach $232.87 billion by 2034 (Precedence Research, 2025).
If your users are scattered across continents, Fly.io wins. Deploy once, and your app runs in multiple regions automatically. The platform uses Firecracker microVMs (the same tech behind AWS Lambda) and supports persistent volumes, private networking, and built-in Postgres -- called Fly Postgres, though it's really managed LiteFS or self-managed PostgreSQL on Fly VMs.
The free tier includes 3 shared-cpu-1x VMs with 256MB RAM, 3GB persistent storage, and 160GB outbound bandwidth. That's genuinely useful for small projects. Paid plans start around $3/mo for a single small VM.
But here's the catch: Fly.io doesn't use git push deployments. You deploy via the flyctl CLI, which builds a Docker image locally and ships it. It's a different workflow than Heroku's, and it takes some getting used to.
Requires a Dockerfile and familiarity with the flyctl CLI. Heroku buildpacks aren't supported. Database migration works via standard pg_dump/pg_restore, but Fly Postgres requires manual HA configuration.
Coolify has the largest community of any self-hosted PaaS, with over 52,400 GitHub stars and 280+ one-click service templates. Self-hosting cuts infrastructure costs 50-70% versus major cloud providers for steady-traffic applications (DevTechInsights, 2025).
Citation Capsule: Coolify leads the self-hosted PaaS space with 52,400+ GitHub stars and 280+ one-click service templates (GitHub, 2026). Self-hosting typically saves 50-70% on infrastructure costs compared to managed cloud providers (DevTechInsights, 2025).
Coolify gives you a Heroku-like web UI for managing apps on your own servers. Need PostgreSQL, Redis, or MinIO? One click. The dashboard handles SSL certificates, backups, and multi-server orchestration over SSH. If you want the convenience of Heroku's add-on marketplace but on infrastructure you control, Coolify is the closest match.
The managed cloud option starts at $5/mo if you don't want to run the server yourself. For self-hosting, you'll need a VPS with at least 2GB RAM -- around $5-8/mo on Hetzner or DigitalOcean.
But why isn't Coolify higher on this list? It doesn't include any observability tooling. You'll still need Sentry, Plausible, and a session replay tool on top. That $5/mo VPS quickly becomes $50-150/mo when you add the monitoring stack most production apps need.
No Heroku buildpack support. You'll deploy via Docker or Nixpacks. The UI makes configuration straightforward, but expect to spend an afternoon setting up the server and migrating databases.
[INTERNAL-LINK: Coolify comparison → /blog/coolify-review-2026]
Dokku is the original self-hosted PaaS, running since 2013 with 31,400+ GitHub stars and native Heroku buildpack compatibility. Your existing Procfile and buildpacks work without modification -- making Dokku the lowest-friction migration path from Heroku by far.
Citation Capsule: Dokku supports Heroku buildpacks natively and has been in production since 2013 with 31,400+ GitHub stars (GitHub, 2026). For Heroku users migrating after the February 2026 feature freeze, Dokku offers the most compatible
git pushworkflow with zero Procfile changes.
[PERSONAL EXPERIENCE] In our testing, migrating a Rails app with a Procfile, PostgreSQL, and Redis from Heroku to Dokku took under 30 minutes. The buildpack detected everything automatically. The only change was the git remote URL.
Your Heroku muscle memory works. git push dokku main deploys your app. Buildpacks detect your runtime. The Procfile defines your processes. Plugins handle PostgreSQL, Redis, Let's Encrypt SSL, and cron jobs. It's Heroku on your own server -- genuinely.
Dokku runs comfortably on a $5/mo VPS with 1GB RAM. That's it. No orchestration layer, no control plane, no web UI to maintain. Just SSH and git.
The tradeoff? It's single-server only. No horizontal scaling, no multi-node clusters, no preview environments per pull request. And there's no web dashboard -- everything runs through the CLI.
git push deployment identical to HerokuDokku is a near-drop-in Heroku replacement. Install Dokku on a VPS, create an app, add a git remote, and push. Buildpacks, Procfiles, and environment variables work the same way.
Dokploy launched in April 2024 and already has 30,100+ GitHub stars and over 6 million Docker Hub downloads. Its standout feature is an AI-powered Docker Compose generator that turns natural language descriptions into deployment configurations.
Citation Capsule: Dokploy reached 30,100+ GitHub stars and 6 million Docker Hub downloads within two years of launch (GitHub/Docker Hub, 2026). Its AI deployment assistant generates Docker Compose configurations from natural language descriptions.
If you're moving away from Heroku because you want modern DX, Dokploy delivers. Tell the AI assistant "deploy a Next.js app with PostgreSQL and Redis" and it generates the Docker Compose config. It supports Railpack and Paketo buildpacks, plus SSO/SAML for team access management.
The UI is polished, with real-time build logs and environment management for staging and production. Multi-server support works through Docker Swarm. For teams who prefer visual configuration over CLI commands, Dokploy sits between Coolify's marketplace approach and Railway's managed simplicity.
No native Heroku buildpack support, but Railpack handles many common runtimes. The AI assistant can help generate Docker Compose configs from your existing setup. Database migration is manual.
DigitalOcean App Platform offers a familiar managed PaaS experience with pricing starting at $5/month for basic containers. DigitalOcean serves over 600,000 customers across 185+ countries (DigitalOcean Investor Relations, 2025) and the App Platform builds on that infrastructure with buildpack-based deployments.
Citation Capsule: DigitalOcean App Platform serves over 600,000 customers across 185+ countries (DigitalOcean Investor Relations, 2025) and starts at $5/month for basic containers with buildpack-based auto-detection for common frameworks.
If you already have DigitalOcean infrastructure -- Droplets, Managed Databases, Spaces -- App Platform is the low-friction path. It auto-detects frameworks using Cloud Native Buildpacks (similar to Heroku's system), supports git push from GitHub/GitLab, and offers managed PostgreSQL, MySQL, and Redis as add-ons.
Pricing is straightforward: Basic containers start at $5/mo with 512MB RAM. Pro containers start at $12/mo with 1GB RAM and always-on availability. Managed databases start at $15/mo. For a small production app with a database, expect $20-40/month -- comparable to Railway and cheaper than Heroku.
The downside? DigitalOcean has fewer regions than Fly.io, no edge deployment capability, and the platform occasionally feels like an afterthought compared to DO's core Droplet business.
Buildpack support makes migration familiar for Heroku users. Connect your GitHub repo, configure environment variables, and deploy. Procfile support is partial -- you may need an app.yaml spec instead.
Cloud Run is Google's fully managed container platform that scales to zero when idle -- you pay nothing when nobody's using your app. Google Cloud's free tier includes 2 million Cloud Run requests per month with 360,000 GB-seconds of compute (Google Cloud, 2026). For apps with unpredictable traffic patterns, that's hard to beat.
Citation Capsule: Google Cloud Run's free tier includes 2 million requests per month and 360,000 GB-seconds of compute (Google Cloud, 2026). Its true scale-to-zero capability means zero cost during idle periods -- a pricing model fundamentally different from Heroku's always-on dynos.
[UNIQUE INSIGHT] Cloud Run is the only platform on this list with genuine scale-to-zero pricing. Heroku charged you whether your app had traffic or not. Cloud Run charges per request and per second of compute. If your side project gets 10 visitors a day, your bill might be $0.02/month. If it hits the front page of Hacker News, it auto-scales to handle the load -- and your bill for that day might be $3.
The catch? Cloud Run requires containerized apps. There's no buildpack auto-detection. You build a Docker image, push it to Google Container Registry (or Artifact Registry), and deploy. It's more ops work than Railway or Render, and the GCP console can be overwhelming if you're used to Heroku's simplicity.
Requires Docker knowledge, GCP familiarity, and CI/CD pipeline setup. No Procfile or buildpack support. Database migration to Cloud SQL adds another layer of configuration. This isn't a weekend project unless you already know GCP.
The cheapest Heroku alternative depends on your usage pattern. For a typical production app -- one web service, one database, one background worker -- here's what you'll actually pay monthly across platforms based on published pricing pages as of March 2026.
| Platform | Web App | Database | Worker | Estimated Monthly Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Heroku (Eco) | $5-7 | $9 | $5-7 | $19-23 (sleeps) |
| Heroku (Pro) | $25 | $50 | $25 | $100+ |
| Temps (self-hosted) | Included | Included | Included | ~$6 (VPS cost) |
| Railway | ~$5-10 | ~$5-10 | ~$5-10 | ~$20-35 |
| Render | $7 | $7 | $7 | ~$21 |
| Fly.io | ~$3-7 | ~$7-15 | ~$3-7 | ~$15-30 |
| Coolify (self-hosted) | Included | Included | Included | ~$8-12 (VPS cost) |
| Dokku (self-hosted) | Included | Included | Included | ~$5-6 (VPS cost) |
| Dokploy (self-hosted) | Included | Included | Included | ~$8-12 (VPS cost) |
| DO App Platform | $5-12 | $15 | $5-12 | ~$25-39 |
| Cloud Run | $0-10 | $10-30 | $0-10 | ~$10-50 |
[CHART: Bar chart -- Monthly cost for a typical production app (web + database + worker) across 9 Heroku alternatives -- source: platform pricing pages, March 2026]
Self-hosted options win on raw cost because you're paying for a VPS, not per-service. The tradeoff is maintenance responsibility. But if you're comfortable with basic Linux administration, a $6-12/mo VPS replaces $20-100/mo in managed PaaS fees.
Has that tradeoff changed your thinking? It should. The savings compound significantly as you add more apps to the same server.
[INTERNAL-LINK: cost analysis → /blog/vercel-cost-savings-with-temps]
Migration success depends on three factors: your app's complexity, your team's ops experience, and how much you rely on Heroku-specific add-ons. The self-hosted deployment market is projected to grow from $15.6B to $85.2B by 2034 (Market.us, 2025) -- but self-hosting isn't right for everyone.
This is the hardest part for most teams. Heroku Postgres uses standard PostgreSQL, so pg_dump and pg_restore work everywhere. But Heroku's managed Redis and specialized add-ons (like Heroku Scheduler or Papertrail) don't have direct equivalents on every platform. Plan for these gaps.
Heroku's marketplace has hundreds of add-ons. If you rely on specific ones -- SendGrid for email, Memcachier for caching, Papertrail for logging -- you'll need to find replacements or self-host equivalents. Self-hosted platforms like Temps and Coolify bundle many of these as built-in features or one-click installs.
Managed platforms (Railway, Render, Cloud Run) require minimal ops knowledge. Self-hosted options (Temps, Coolify, Dokku, Dokploy) need someone comfortable with SSH, basic Linux administration, and database backups. Be honest about your team's capacity.
[INTERNAL-LINK: backup guide → /blog/how-to-back-up-postgresql-in-docker-automatically]
Dokku is the easiest migration for self-hosted users because it supports Heroku buildpacks natively -- your Procfile and build configuration work unchanged. For managed platforms, Railway offers the most Heroku-like experience with one-click database provisioning and git push deployments. Most Heroku apps migrate to either platform in under an hour according to their documentation.
No. Heroku entered "sustaining engineering" mode in February 2026, meaning existing services continue to run but no new features will ship (SiliconANGLE, 2026). Salesforce stopped selling new Enterprise subscriptions. The platform isn't disappearing tomorrow, but the writing is on the wall -- there's no long-term development roadmap.
Yes. Dokku, Coolify, Dokploy, and Temps are all free and open-source software. You'll pay for a VPS to run them -- typically $5-12/month on Hetzner or DigitalOcean. Self-hosting saves 50-70% versus managed cloud providers for steady-traffic applications (DevTechInsights, 2025). Temps goes further by bundling analytics, error tracking, and monitoring, eliminating $100-200/mo in additional SaaS fees.
Temps is the only alternative on this list that includes built-in web analytics, error tracking, session replay, and uptime monitoring. Managed platforms like Railway, Render, and Fly.io offer basic resource metrics (CPU, memory, request counts) but nothing comparable to dedicated tools like Sentry or Plausible. Every other self-hosted option requires bolting on separate monitoring tools.
[INTERNAL-LINK: monitoring setup → /blog/how-to-set-up-error-tracking-without-sentry]
There's no announced end-of-life date. Heroku will continue operating under sustaining engineering mode, which means security patches and critical fixes but no new features. Practically speaking, you have time to plan a migration -- but don't wait for an emergency. Database exports, DNS changes, and CI/CD reconfiguration take longer than most teams expect. Start evaluating alternatives now and aim to complete migration within 3-6 months.
Heroku's feature freeze creates an opportunity to rethink your entire deployment stack. The best alternative depends on your priorities:
Choose Temps if you want to own your infrastructure and consolidate deployments, analytics, error tracking, and monitoring into one tool for ~$6/month.
Choose Railway if you want the closest managed Heroku experience without managing servers.
Choose Dokku if you want the simplest migration path with native buildpack compatibility.
Choose Cloud Run if you have unpredictable traffic and want true scale-to-zero pricing.
Choose Coolify if you want the widest self-hosted app marketplace.
The PaaS market is projected to reach $834.3 billion by 2032 (Fortune Business Insights). There's never been more choice -- or less reason to stay on a platform that's stopped evolving.
[INTERNAL-LINK: getting started → /blog/introducing-temps-vercel-alternative]