The 7 Best Heroku Alternatives in 2026 (Free Tiers & Prices Compared)

What is the best Heroku alternative in 2026?#

The best Heroku alternative depends on what you need. As of 6 November 2026, Heroku has no free plan, and its cheapest always-on dyno (Basic) costs $7/month. Render is the most Heroku-like (always-on from $7, free Postgres that expires after 30 days). Railway bills by usage (Hobby $5 including $5 of usage). Fly.io suits multi-region apps (VMs from $2.19/month). DockHosting, our own product, has a free app plus a PostgreSQL database that never expires, and always-on apps from $4/month in a single EU region.

Heroku made "git push and it's live" the default way to ship a web app. In 2026 it's still a solid platform, but it's no longer the cheap one. There's no free plan, an always-on dyno costs $7 a month, and Postgres is billed separately.

So which platform should you move to? We compared seven Heroku alternatives on what matters for side projects, students and small teams: is there a real free tier, what does always-on cost, and what happens to your database.

Quick comparison#

*Northflank lists smaller plans without a published price.

1. DockHosting (our product): free app + database that don't expire#

Full disclosure: this is us. DockHosting is a developer-first PaaS. You run dock deploy in a folder (or push to GitHub), and it detects Node.js, Python, Go, Ruby, PHP, Laravel, Spring Boot or a Dockerfile, builds it, and gives you an HTTPS URL.

• Free: $0, no credit card. 2 projects, 1 managed database, 512 MB memory and a .dockhosting.cloud subdomain. Apps sleep after 1 hour without visits and wake on the next request.
• Always on: Hobby at $4/month gives 1 GB memory, 3 projects, 2 databases, your own domain and daily backups. Pro is $9 and Team is $19.
• Databases: PostgreSQL, MySQL, MariaDB, MongoDB, Redis and ClickHouse, connected over a private network through DATABASE_URL. The free database (500 MB) doesn't pause and doesn't expire.
• Pricing model: flat monthly, with no bandwidth metering.

Limitations: one region (eu-central-1), so it's best for apps whose users are mostly in or near Europe. One container per project, so multi-service setups deploy as separate projects.

Best for: students, side projects and small production apps that want predictable flat pricing. Deploy a Node.js app in one command to try it.

2. Render: the closest to Heroku's feel#

Render is the most Heroku-like experience: Git deploys, managed Postgres, background workers and cron jobs.

• Free: web services with 512 MB and 0.1 CPU that spin down after 15 minutes without traffic, with 750 free instance hours per workspace per month. Free Postgres (1 GB) expires 30 days after creation, followed by a 14-day grace period.
• Always on: Starter at $7 (512 MB, 0.5 CPU). Standard is $25 (2 GB).
• Postgres: from $6/month (Basic-256mb).
• 2026 change: workspace plans were restructured on 23 April 2026. Pro is now $25 flat, and bandwidth overage is $0.15/GB.

Best for: teams that want a mature, Heroku-style platform and are fine paying per service.

3. Railway: usage-based, great developer experience#

Railway bills for the CPU and memory you actually use, with a polished canvas UI.

• Free: a one-time $5 trial credit (30 days), then a Free plan with $1 of credit per month (0.5 GB RAM).
• Paid: Hobby is $5/month and includes $5 of usage. Beyond that you pay roughly $10 per GB of RAM and $20 per vCPU per month.
• Postgres: runs as a normal service billed at the same resource rates. There's no separate database price.

Best for: developers who like usage-based billing and are comfortable watching resource usage.

4. Fly.io: global VMs close to your users#

Fly.io runs your app as lightweight VMs in many regions worldwide.

• Free: none for new organizations, only a trial with $1 of credit for 7 days. The old Hobby plan was discontinued in October 2024.
• Always on: shared-cpu-1x from $2.19/month (256 MB) or $3.69 (512 MB), billed by usage.
• Postgres: Managed Postgres starts at $38/month, with high availability, backups and pooling included.

Best for: latency-sensitive apps that need to run in several regions.

5. Northflank: a generous always-on sandbox#

Northflank combines a PaaS with "bring your own cloud".

• Free: the Developer Sandbox, with no card: 2 services, 2 jobs, 1 database or addon, and up to $20/month of resources, always on with no sleeping. Northflank says it shouldn't be used for production.
• Paid: the cheapest plan with a published price is 0.5 vCPU / 1 GB at $12/month.

Best for: experimenting with always-on services, and teams that want to run on their own AWS or GCP account later.

6. DigitalOcean App Platform: free static sites#

DigitalOcean App Platform sits on top of DigitalOcean's cloud.

• Free: up to 3 static sites only. Web services are paid.
• Always on: $5/month (1 vCPU shared, 512 MiB).
• Postgres: a dev database is $7 (512 MiB, not backed up by default). Managed PostgreSQL starts at $15.15.

Best for: teams already on DigitalOcean, and static sites.

7. Koyeb: check before you sign up#

Koyeb used to be a popular free choice. In February 2026 it announced it was joining Mistral AI and that the Starter plan would be removed, so new users need a paid plan (Pro from $29/month) and a payment method. Existing organizations were told nothing would change for them.

Best for: existing Koyeb users. New users should check the current plans first.

How to choose#

• You want $0 with a database that sticks around: DockHosting Free.
• You want the most Heroku-like workflow: Render.
• You prefer paying for exact usage: Railway or Fly.io.
• Your users are worldwide and latency matters: Fly.io.
• You need an always-on sandbox to experiment: Northflank.

Migrating from Heroku in 4 steps#

Most Heroku apps move without code changes, because they already follow the twelve-factor conventions that DockHosting uses: PORT and DATABASE_URL come from the environment.

1. Export your database: pg_dump --no-owner "$HEROKU_DATABASE_URL" > dump.sql
2. Create a managed PostgreSQL in the DockHosting dashboard, attach it to your project, and restore the dump with psql. Connecting from your laptop uses public database access, which is available on Hobby and up.
3. Copy your config vars into the project's environment variables.
4. Deploy: run dock deploy from the project folder, or connect the GitHub repository.

A Procfile isn't needed. The start command is detected per stack (for example npm start for Node.js or Gunicorn for Django) and can be overridden in the dashboard. See connecting your app to managed PostgreSQL for the database side.

Related: Free backend hosting in 2026 · Railway app alternatives · Render free Postgres expired? · Free Node.js hosting that doesn't sleep