11 Best PaaS Providers in 2026, Compared

The best PaaS providers in 2026 fall into four groups, and the right choice starts with picking the group. This guide compares eleven platform as a service providers on entry price, pricing model, managed databases and regions, using figures from each provider's own pricing and documentation pages. Out Plane is our product and appears as one of the eleven, so read its section with that in mind.

The short answer: for a classic Git push PaaS with managed databases, start with Render, Railway or DigitalOcean App Platform, or stay on Heroku if your app depends on its add-ons. If your company already runs on a big cloud, Google Cloud Run, Azure App Service and AWS Elastic Beanstalk keep everything in one account. If your apps must be hosted in the EU, look at Out Plane (Germany) or Scalingo (France). If you want small machines in many regions or a PaaS inside your own cloud account, look at Fly.io or Northflank.

How We Chose and Compared These Providers

For this list, a PaaS provider is a service where you hand over code or a container image and get a running app on a URL with HTTPS, without managing servers. That leaves out raw virtual machines, self-hosted platforms you install on your own server, and hosts built only for static sites. If the model is new to you, what is PaaS explains how it differs from IaaS and SaaS.

Every provider was compared on the same five points:

1. Entry price. The cheapest way to run one service, as listed on the provider's pricing page.
2. Pricing model. Fixed monthly sizes, usage billed by the second or minute, or a plan fee with usage included.
3. Managed databases. Databases the provider runs itself, as opposed to a separate product you buy next to it.
4. Regions. Where your app can run, counted from the provider's documentation.
5. Best for. The team that gets the most out of it.

Every figure comes from official pricing and documentation pages read on 12 November 2026, listed under Sources at the end. We did not use review sites or older roundups, because PaaS prices change often. Prices are list prices before tax, in US regions where a provider prices by region.

PaaS Providers at a Glance

Euro prices exclude VAT. Facts checked on 12 November 2026; sources are listed at the end.

What a Small Always-On App With a Database Costs

Entry prices leave out what most teams need next: a database. This table prices the same starting point on each provider, one small app that runs around the clock plus the smallest database the provider runs for you, at list prices.

The sizes are not identical, so compare the specs as well as the totals. On the three big clouds the database is a separate product (Cloud SQL, Azure Database for PostgreSQL or Amazon RDS) with its own pricing, so a single figure would not compare like for like.

All-Round PaaS Providers

These are the platforms most people mean by PaaS: connect a repository, push, and get an app and a managed database from the same dashboard.

Heroku

Heroku is a Git push PaaS built around dynos, pipelines and add-ons. On February 6, 2026, it moved to a sustaining engineering model focused on stability, security, reliability and support rather than new features. Heroku says nothing changes for current customers, and Enterprise Account contracts are no longer offered to new customers.

Pricing as of November 2026. No free tier is listed. Eco dynos cost $5 a month and sleep after 30 minutes of inactivity. Basic is $7, Standard-1X $25, Standard-2X $50 and Performance-M $250. Heroku Postgres starts at $5 a month with Essential-0, and Key-Value Store at $3. Apps run in the US or Europe on the Common Runtime, and Private Spaces add 10 regions.

Choose it if your app already runs on Heroku, leans on add-ons, and a platform focused on stability suits you. If you are moving off it, see our Heroku alternatives.

Render

Render runs web services, private services, background workers, cron jobs, static sites, Postgres and Key Value, its Redis-compatible store. You pay a workspace fee plus compute per service, prorated by the second.

Pricing as of November 2026. The Hobby workspace is $0, Pro is $25 a month and Scale is $499, plus compute. Paid compute starts at $7 a month (0.5 CPU, 512 MB) and Postgres at $6 (256 MB). Free web services spin down after 15 minutes without traffic and take about a minute to start again, and free Postgres databases expire 30 days after creation. Horizontal autoscaling comes with the Pro workspace. Regions are Oregon, Ohio, Virginia, Frankfurt and Singapore.

Choose it if you want Heroku-style service types, a free workspace to experiment in, and autoscaling when you upgrade. Our Render alternatives covers what sits next to it.

Railway

Railway deploys services, databases and volumes from GitHub or a Docker image, and bills usage by the second on top of a small plan minimum.

Pricing as of November 2026. Hobby has a $5 monthly minimum that includes $5 of usage. Pro has a $20 minimum that includes $20, with unlimited seats. Usage works out to about $20 per vCPU and $10 per GB of RAM over a full month, plus $0.05 per GB of egress. The Free plan starts with a 30 day trial and $5 of credits, then gives $1 a month. PostgreSQL, MySQL, Redis and MongoDB come as templates Railway maintains and patches. You switch on backups, point-in-time recovery (PostgreSQL and MySQL) and high availability from the dashboard, and you resize the volume when the disk fills. Regions are California, Virginia, Amsterdam and Singapore.

Choose it if your traffic is uneven and you would rather pay for what each service uses than for fixed sizes. Our Railway pricing breakdown works through real monthly bills, and Railway alternatives covers the options.

DigitalOcean App Platform

DigitalOcean's PaaS deploys apps from Git repositories or container images in fixed monthly container sizes.

Pricing as of November 2026. Up to 3 static site apps are free. Containers start at $5 a month (1 shared vCPU, 512 MiB, 50 GiB of transfer), and that fixed size runs one instance only. Extra transfer is $0.02 per GiB. A 512 MiB development database costs $7 a month and is not backed up by default. Managed PostgreSQL and MySQL start at $15.15 a month, and DigitalOcean also manages MongoDB, Kafka and Valkey. Autoscaling is available on dedicated instances. Apps run in 12 regions, including Amsterdam, London and Frankfurt.

Choose it if you want a fixed price per container or already use DigitalOcean for servers and databases. See our DigitalOcean App Platform alternatives.

EU-Hosted PaaS Providers

When customers or contracts require apps to run in the EU, these two keep them there.

Out Plane

Out Plane runs applications, managed PostgreSQL, S3 compatible buckets and persistent volumes from one console, with apps hosted in Germany. You deploy with a Git push from GitHub or from any Docker image. Apps stay running, so there are no cold starts, and each app runs up to 1, 5 or 10 instances on Starter, Pro or Growth. A team's apps reach each other over private networking, custom domains get TLS automatically, and IP allow lists control who can connect. Real-time CPU and memory metrics, runtime logs and HTTP logs sit next to each app. Hangars are cloud machines for your team's coding agents, and the outplane CLI covers the same work from a terminal.

Pricing as of November 2026. Starter is $9 a month and Pro $29, both with a 14 day free trial. Growth is $299 and Enterprise is custom. Each plan fee includes usage: $9 on Starter, $15 on Pro and $150 on Growth. Compute is billed per minute. Managed PostgreSQL 14 to 18 costs $6 per database a month, with automated backups, point-in-time recovery, read replicas and connection pooling, in 8 regions with Frankfurt as the default. Redis, MySQL and MongoDB run as one-click templates. Bandwidth, TLS and custom domains are not billed. Instance prices are on the pricing page.

Choose it if you want always-on apps and managed PostgreSQL hosted in Germany, usage included in the plan fee, or a place for your team's coding agents next to the apps they ship. Docs: deploy from GitHub, deploy from an image, databases, scaling and Hangars.

Scalingo

Scalingo runs apps and databases in two Paris regions on 3DS Outscale infrastructure. One of them, osc-secnum-fr1, is a SecNumCloud region available on request.

Pricing as of November 2026. Containers start at €7.20 per 30 days for 256 MB, excluding VAT, and every service is billed by the minute. Containers never sleep. PostgreSQL starts at €7.20 per 30 days (512 MB, 10 GB of storage), and Scalingo also runs MySQL, MongoDB, caching, Elasticsearch, OpenSearch and InfluxDB. Every database plan includes daily backups, with point-in-time recovery on PostgreSQL. Starter databases run on a single node with a 98% SLA, and Business plans on several nodes with 99.96%. The SecNumCloud region costs a little more, €8.64 for the smallest container.

Choose it if you need hosting in France, including health data hosting (HDS) or SecNumCloud infrastructure.

Container-First Platforms

These platforms start from containers and machines, and suit teams that want more say over where each workload runs.

Fly.io

Fly.io runs app Machines on servers it operates itself, in 17 regions linked by an Anycast network. Five of the regions are in Europe: Amsterdam, Stockholm, Paris, Frankfurt and London.

Pricing as of November 2026. There is no monthly platform fee and no free tier. New accounts get a $1 trial credit for 7 days, and Fly waives a personal organization's bill when it comes to less than $5 a month. The smallest always-on app, a shared-cpu-1x Machine with 256 MB, costs $2.19 per 30 days, and Machines are billed by the second while they run. Outbound data costs $0.02 per GB in North America and Europe. Managed Postgres starts at $38 a month on the Basic plan, plus $0.28 per GB of storage.

Choose it if your users are spread across continents and you want small machines close to each group of them. Our Fly.io alternatives covers what else fits.

Northflank

Northflank deploys services, jobs and databases on its own managed cloud or inside your cloud account, billed to the second with no seat fees.

Pricing as of November 2026. The Sandbox tier is free with no card: 2 services, 2 jobs and 1 database, up to $20 a month of resources, always on. Pay as you go starts at $0.01667 per vCPU hour, and the nf-compute-50 size (0.5 vCPU, 1 GB) costs $12 a month. Egress is $0.06 per GB. Addons cover PostgreSQL, MySQL, MongoDB, Redis, MinIO and RabbitMQ. Northflank's cloud has 17 regions, 4 of them in Europe, and its bring-your-own-cloud option runs workloads in your account on providers such as AWS, Google Cloud, Azure and Oracle.

Choose it if you want a PaaS workflow on top of your own cloud account, or a free tier that does not sleep.

Cloud-Provider PaaS

If your company already runs on one of the big clouds, its own PaaS keeps billing, access control and networking in a single account. Databases are separate services that you set up and pay for on their own.

Google Cloud Run

Cloud Run runs containers and scales the number of instances with demand. You pay only for the resources used, rounded up to the nearest 100 milliseconds.

Pricing as of November 2026. With request-based billing, the monthly free tier covers 180,000 vCPU-seconds, 360,000 GiB-seconds and 2 million requests. Above that, us-central1 charges $0.000024 per vCPU-second of active time. Databases come from Cloud SQL, a separate service. Cloud Run is available in 43 regions, 13 of them in Europe.

Choose it if you already use Google Cloud and want containers that scale with traffic. See our Google Cloud Run alternatives.

Azure App Service

Azure App Service is Microsoft's managed platform for web apps and APIs, sold in Free, Basic, Premium and Isolated plans.

Pricing as of November 2026. The F1 Free plan gives shared compute with 60 CPU minutes a day and 1 GB of RAM. It has no SLA and is not supported for production. Basic B1 on Linux (1 core, 1.75 GB) lists at $0.017 an hour in East US, about $12.41 for a 730 hour month. You pay for each VM instance in the plan, even while its apps are stopped. Databases come from separate services such as Azure Database for PostgreSQL. Basic B1 on Linux is priced in more than 60 Azure regions.

Choose it if your organization already runs on Azure. See our Azure App Service alternatives.

AWS Elastic Beanstalk

Elastic Beanstalk deploys your app onto AWS resources it creates for you: EC2 instances (a single instance or an Auto Scaling group that scales with traffic), or in cluster mode, nodes provisioned by Amazon EKS Auto Mode.

Pricing as of November 2026. Elastic Beanstalk itself costs nothing extra. You pay for the EC2 instances, storage and other AWS resources it creates at their normal rates, plus CloudWatch for extra metrics and logs. Cluster mode adds the EKS Auto Mode management fee. Databases come from Amazon RDS, priced separately. It is available in 34 AWS regions including GovCloud, 8 of them in Europe.

Choose it if your company standardizes on AWS and you want a managed deploy flow without leaving it. See our Elastic Beanstalk alternatives.

Also Considered

• Koyeb. Koyeb is joining Mistral AI to build AI infrastructure, and its pricing page now starts at Pro, $29 a month plus compute with $10 of compute included. We left it out of the main list while its focus moves. Our Koyeb alternatives covers it in detail.
• Clever Cloud. A PaaS with managed PostgreSQL, MySQL, MongoDB and Redis. Its pricing page uses an estimator instead of listed prices, so there was no entry price to set beside the others.
• Self-hosted PaaS. Tools such as Coolify and Dokku give you a PaaS workflow on a server you run yourself. See self-hosted vs managed PaaS, Coolify alternatives and Dokku alternatives.

How to Choose a PaaS Provider

• You want to start for free. Render's Hobby workspace, Northflank's Sandbox, Cloud Run's monthly free tier and Azure's F1 plan cost nothing to start. Railway's Free plan gives $1 a month after its trial. Out Plane's Starter and Pro plans start with a 14 day free trial.
• You want a predictable monthly bill. Heroku, Render, DigitalOcean and Scalingo sell fixed sizes, and Out Plane includes usage in the plan fee.
• You want automatic scaling. Cloud Run scales instances on its own, Render includes horizontal autoscaling on Pro, Elastic Beanstalk can run an Auto Scaling group, Northflank includes autoscaling on pay as you go, and DigitalOcean autoscales dedicated instances.
• Your apps must be hosted in the EU. Out Plane runs apps in Germany and Scalingo in Paris. Render, Railway, DigitalOcean, Fly.io, Northflank, Heroku and the big clouds also offer European regions.
• Your users are worldwide. Cloud Run (43 regions), Fly.io (17) and Northflank (17) cover the most ground.
• You want the database from the same provider. Heroku, Render, DigitalOcean, Out Plane, Scalingo, Fly.io and Northflank run databases themselves. Railway maintains database templates, and the big clouds sell databases as separate products.
• Your team runs coding agents. Out Plane's Hangars give agents cloud machines next to the apps they deploy.

FAQ

What is a PaaS provider?

A PaaS provider runs the servers, operating system and runtime for you, so you deploy only your code or a container image. You get a running app on a URL with HTTPS, and usually a managed database from the same dashboard.

What are examples of PaaS?

The eleven providers here cover the main types: all-round platforms (Heroku, Render, Railway, DigitalOcean App Platform), EU-hosted platforms (Out Plane, Scalingo), container-first platforms (Fly.io, Northflank) and cloud-provider platforms (Google Cloud Run, Azure App Service, AWS Elastic Beanstalk).

Which PaaS providers have a free tier in 2026?

Render (free web services spin down after 15 minutes idle), Northflank (the Sandbox), Google Cloud Run (a monthly free tier) and Azure App Service (F1, not for production). Railway's Free plan gives $1 of credit a month after a 30 day trial. Heroku and Fly.io list no free tier. Out Plane's Starter and Pro plans start with a 14 day free trial.

Which PaaS providers host apps in Europe?

Out Plane runs apps in Germany and Scalingo runs in Paris. Others let you pick a European region: Render (Frankfurt), Railway (Amsterdam), DigitalOcean (Amsterdam, London, Frankfurt), Fly.io (5 regions), Northflank (4), Cloud Run (13), Elastic Beanstalk (8) and Heroku's Europe region.

Is Heroku still a good PaaS in 2026?

It is actively supported, and Heroku says nothing changes for current customers. Since February 2026 it has focused on stability and support rather than new features. For an existing app that relies on add-ons it remains a reasonable home. For a new project, compare it with the other all-round providers above.

Sources

Facts checked on 12 November 2026 against Heroku pricing, Heroku regions, An Update on Heroku, Render pricing, Render regions, Render free instances, Railway pricing, Railway regions, Railway databases, App Platform pricing, App Platform availability, DigitalOcean managed database pricing, Out Plane pricing, Scalingo pricing, Scalingo regions, Fly.io pricing, Fly.io regions, Northflank pricing, Northflank regions, Northflank databases, Cloud Run pricing, Cloud Run locations, Cloud SQL from Cloud Run, Azure App Service pricing, Azure Retail Prices API, App Service with Azure Database for PostgreSQL, Elastic Beanstalk pricing, Elastic Beanstalk endpoints, Koyeb pricing and Clever Cloud pricing. Prices change, so confirm them before you commit.

Next Steps

Compare plans on the pricing page, or browse every head-to-head comparison on the alternatives page. To try the EU-hosted option from this list, start a 14 day free trial on Out Plane.