Heroku Alternatives Now That It's in Sustaining Engineering
On 6 February 2026, Heroku announced a transition to a sustaining engineering model. In practice that means no new features, no new Enterprise contracts for new customers, and a roadmap limited to security patches, stability fixes and infrastructure maintenance.
Existing customers can keep using it and renewing, with no immediate pricing or service change. Nothing is shutting down.
But sustaining engineering is a recognisable phase. The platform has stopped evolving, and if you’re planning two to five years out, that belongs in the decision. The question stops being “is Heroku worth the money” and becomes “when do I move, and to what.”
What a real app costs
Heroku refugees are almost always price-motivated, so start here. A genuinely small production app — one web process, one worker, a small Postgres and a Redis:
On Heroku, Basic dynos:
| Component | Cost |
|---|---|
| Web dyno (Basic) | $7.00 |
| Worker dyno (Basic) | $7.00 |
| Postgres Essential-1, 10GB | $9.00 |
| Key-Value Store Premium-0, 50MB | $15.00 |
| Total | $38.00 |
On Standard-1X dynos, which is what most production apps actually run: $74.00/month.
The same four services as containers on one 4GB VPS:
| Host | Monthly | vs Heroku Basic | vs Standard |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hostinger | $11.99 | 3.2× | 6.2× |
| Cloudzy | $17.37 | 2.2× | 4.3× |
| Hetzner | $21.59 | 1.8× | 3.4× |
| DigitalOcean | $24.00 | 1.6× | 3.1× |
The line that says the most: Heroku’s smallest paid Redis is 50MB of RAM for $15/month. A 4GB VPS runs Redis alongside everything else for nothing extra. You aren’t paying for memory there, you’re paying for someone to operate it — which was always Heroku’s proposition and is exactly what you have to replace.
Mapping the primitives
Ranking platforms is less useful than checking each Heroku feature you actually use has a home.
| Heroku primitive | What replaces it |
|---|---|
| Dynos | Containers — on Railway, or Docker on your own box |
| Heroku Postgres | A managed database, or Postgres as a container |
| Add-on marketplace | Self-installed services, or the platform’s own catalogue |
| Review apps | Preview environments (Railway and Coolify both do these) |
| Pipelines | Your CI, usually GitHub Actions |
| Buildpacks | Nixpacks on Railway, or a Dockerfile you write |
Buildpacks are the one that catches people. Heroku’s build system inferred how to build your app from its contents. Railway’s Nixpacks does much the same. Going to a plain VPS means writing a Dockerfile — not difficult, but it’s work that Heroku did for you and that nobody warns you about.
Add-ons are the second. If you’re using six marketplace add-ons, you’re not migrating an app, you’re migrating six vendor relationships. Enumerate them before you plan anything.
The three destinations
Railway — closest to the Heroku experience
Railway preserves the most of what people actually liked: push and it builds, Nixpacks handles the build inference, databases are a click, preview environments exist. If your objection to Heroku is its trajectory rather than its model, this is the smallest change.
The caveat we’ve priced before, honestly: Railway bills for usage, and that includes residency. Anything that must stay awake — a web process serving requests, a worker holding a queue connection — is billed as always-on, because it is. We ran this for n8n and a permanently-resident service works out dearer than a flat VPS quickly. For bursty workloads it’s excellent.
If Railway is where you’re heading, we wrote the runbook — the four things that break, the zero-downtime cutover, and how to predict a metered bill after fixed dyno pricing.
A VPS with Coolify — replaces everything, if you accept ops
Coolify is open-source and self-hostable, and it’s what makes this route credible now. It gives you git-push deploys, automatic TLS, preview environments and a dashboard on a server you rent. You’re running a platform, not writing systemd units.
Hostinger is the cheapest capable host for it at $6.49 promotional and $11.99 at renewal for 4GB, with one-click Docker templates. Hetzner is the best hardware per euro when its CX tier is in stock — check, because it’s been unavailable and the CPX line is €19.99 for 4GB after its June 2026 repricing. Cloudzy bills monthly with no term, which suits a migration you want to be able to abandon.
DigitalOcean is the documentation-first option at $24 for 4GB, and its App Platform is a middle path if you want managed deploys with predictable pricing. Its tracked link isn’t working on our end, so we’ve named it without linking.
What you take on: TLS renewal is automated but yours, backups are yours, uptime is yours, and OS patching is yours. Budget an evening for the first deploy and roughly 30 minutes a month after.
Fly.io — for global regions
Worth naming though we hold no link for it: Fly.io is the strongest option if you genuinely need your app running in several regions close to users. It expects Docker literacy in a way Railway doesn’t, so it’s a step up in both capability and required knowledge.
When to actually move
Not immediately, and not never. Sustaining engineering means the platform is stable and static, not failing. Nothing breaks next quarter.
Move now if you’re choosing a platform for a new project. There’s no case for starting on something that has stopped evolving.
Move within the year if you’re an Enterprise customer or expected to become one. New Enterprise contracts aren’t being offered, which constrains where you can grow.
Plan a move if your app is going to be running in three years. That’s the horizon where “no new features” compounds into a real gap.
Stay for now if the app is stable, small, and you’d rather spend the migration budget on the product. Heroku still works, and moving a working app to save $20/month is not automatically a good trade — the switching cost is real, and it’s mostly your time.
How we checked this
Heroku’s transition to a sustaining engineering model, announced on 6 February 2026, along with the specifics — no new features, no new Enterprise contracts for new customers, a roadmap limited to security patches, stability and infrastructure maintenance, and existing customers able to continue and renew without immediate pricing or service change — is from Heroku’s own announcement and published reporting of it. We have not read the original blog post directly, and anyone making a multi-year decision on this basis should read Heroku’s own statement rather than our summary.
Heroku’s pricing is from its own pricing page, read in August 2026: Eco at $5, Basic at $7, Standard-1X at $25 and Standard-2X at $50 per month; Postgres Essential-1 at $9 for 10GB with 20 connections; and Key-Value Store Premium-0 at $15 for 50MB with 40 connections.
VPS pricing is each provider’s published figures from our VPS index, read in the same period.
The comparison table is a like-for-like of services, not of operational burden. Running Postgres, Redis, a web process and a worker on one 4GB box is technically straightforward and operationally yours — the $11.99 buys the same components, not the same service. The honest version of the saving includes an evening of setup and about 30 minutes a month, which at professional rates narrows it considerably at the Basic-dyno end and barely dents it at Standard.
We also haven’t stress-tested that configuration. Whether 4GB comfortably runs all four services depends entirely on your app; a memory-hungry worker changes the answer.
What we did not do: we haven’t migrated an app off Heroku, deployed via Coolify, or used Fly.io. The primitive mapping reflects what each platform documents rather than a migration we performed — and the buildpack and add-on warnings are the two things we’d expect to consume the most unplanned time, based on what those features do rather than on our own migration log.
The hosting links above are affiliate links. Heroku, Coolify and Fly.io are named and unlinked, and the recommendation to stay put for now earns us nothing.
FAQ
Is Heroku shutting down?
No. In February 2026 it moved to a sustaining engineering model — security patches and stability fixes, no new features, no new Enterprise contracts. Existing customers can continue and renew.
Should I migrate off Heroku now?
Move now for new projects, plan a move if your app will still be running in three years, and consider staying if it’s small and stable. Sustaining engineering means static, not failing.
What is the best Heroku alternative?
Railway preserves the deploy experience most closely. A VPS with Coolify replaces everything for a third of the price if you accept the operational work. Fly.io is the pick for genuine multi-region needs.
How much cheaper is a VPS than Heroku?
For a web process, worker, small Postgres and Redis: $38/month on Basic dynos or $74 on Standard-1X, against $12–24 for a 4GB VPS running all four as containers.
What’s the catch with Railway?
It bills for usage including residency, so anything that stays awake is billed as always-on. Excellent for bursty workloads, dearer than a flat VPS for permanently-resident services.
What will be hardest about leaving Heroku?
Buildpacks and add-ons. Heroku inferred how to build your app; on a VPS you write a Dockerfile. And every marketplace add-on is a separate vendor relationship to replace.
Do I lose review apps if I leave Heroku?
No — Railway and Coolify both provide preview environments. It’s configuration rather than construction, but it isn’t automatic.
