Heroku was the platform that taught a generation of developers what deployment should feel like: push code, get a URL, move on. But several years of price increases and the removal of the free tier in November 2022 pushed many developers to look elsewhere. If you're searching for a Heroku alternative that offers fair pricing, modern tooling, and no sleeping dynos, this guide lays out your options clearly.
Why Developers Are Looking for Heroku Alternatives
The shift away from Heroku accelerated with a series of product decisions that made the platform less competitive for cost-conscious developers.
The free tier was removed in November 2022. Heroku's free dynos were the on-ramp for millions of developers, students, and side projects. Removing them without a meaningful replacement pushed large parts of the community to evaluate alternatives.
Eco dynos sleep after 30 minutes of inactivity. The $5/month Eco plan is Heroku's closest successor to the free tier, but dynos on this plan spin down when idle. When a request arrives after a period of inactivity, users experience a cold start delay of 10 to 30 seconds. For any project with real users, this is not acceptable in production.
Fixed dyno pricing scales poorly. Heroku charges per dyno on fixed monthly increments. A Standard 1X dyno costs $25/month whether your application uses 1% of its CPU or 100%. There is no per-second billing, no automatic scale-to-zero, and no way to pay only for what you consume.
PostgreSQL costs add up quickly. Heroku's managed Postgres starts at $9/month for the Mini plan, which includes no continuous backups and a strict connection limit. Scaling to a plan with production-grade features pushes costs significantly higher.
These constraints are reasonable trade-offs for large teams with dedicated infrastructure budgets. For individual developers, startups, and small teams, they represent unnecessary overhead.
Quick Comparison: Heroku vs. Out Plane
| Feature | Heroku | Out Plane |
|---|---|---|
| Free Tier | None | 3 free instances on Hobby plan |
| Free Credit | None | $20 on signup |
| Billing Model | Fixed monthly per dyno | Per-second billing |
| Cold Starts | Yes (Eco/Basic dynos) | No (always-on) |
| Auto-Scaling | Manual dyno scaling | Automatic based on traffic |
| Databases | PostgreSQL only (add-on) | PostgreSQL, MySQL, MongoDB |
| Docker Support | Limited container registry | Native Docker + Buildpacks |
| Starting Price | $5/month (sleeping dynos) | Pay only for usage |
| Buildpacks | Yes | Yes (Paketo Buildpacks) |
| Custom Domains + SSL | Yes | Yes (automatic) |
| Log Retention | 1,500 lines (free plan) | 7 days (all plans) |
| GitHub Integration | Yes | Yes (auto-deploy on push) |
Pricing Comparison
Understanding the actual cost difference requires looking at real usage scenarios, not just headline numbers.
Heroku Pricing in 2026
Heroku's current pricing tiers for dynos:
- Eco: $5/month — dynos sleep after 30 minutes of inactivity; 1,000 dyno hours shared across all Eco apps
- Basic: $7/month per dyno — always-on but no horizontal scaling
- Standard 1X: $25/month per dyno — auto-scaling supported
- Standard 2X: $50/month per dyno — double the RAM
- Performance M: $250/month per dyno
Database pricing is separate:
- Heroku Postgres Mini: $9/month — 10,000 rows, no continuous backup
- Heroku Postgres Basic: $13/month — 10 million rows, no continuous backup
- Heroku Postgres Standard 0: $50/month — production-grade features start here
For a typical production application with two Standard 1X dynos and a Standard 0 database, the monthly bill reaches $100 before any additional add-ons.
Out Plane Pricing in 2026
Out Plane uses per-second billing with no fixed monthly dyno commitments.
- Hobby plan: Includes 3 free instances for development and testing
- New account credit: $20 in free credit on signup, no credit card required to start
- Compute: Billed per second of actual usage
- Auto-scaling: Instances scale up under load and scale back down automatically
- Databases: Managed PostgreSQL, MySQL, and MongoDB with backups included
For a production application that runs at moderate traffic, per-second billing often costs less than fixed dyno pricing. You do not pay for idle capacity. During off-peak hours when traffic is low and fewer instances are active, the meter slows accordingly.
The difference is most significant for applications with variable traffic patterns: projects that are busy during business hours and quiet overnight, consumer apps with weekend peaks, or internal tools with predictable office-hours usage.
Key Differences Between Heroku and Out Plane
Billing Model: Per-Second vs. Fixed Dyno
This is the most consequential difference for most developers.
Heroku charges a fixed monthly amount per dyno regardless of actual CPU or memory utilization. If you provision a Standard 1X dyno for $25/month, you pay $25 whether the dyno is under load for 100 hours or idle for 680 hours.
Out Plane charges by the second of actual resource consumption. An instance that handles a burst of traffic for 10 hours in a day costs a fraction of an instance that runs idle around the clock. This model benefits any application that does not sustain constant high traffic.
Always-On vs. Cold Start Behavior
Heroku's Eco and Basic dynos sleep after a period of inactivity. The first request to a sleeping dyno triggers a spin-up process that typically takes 10 to 30 seconds. Users see a blank loading screen or a timeout during this window.
Out Plane instances do not sleep. Applications remain active and respond immediately. There is no warm-up delay and no user-facing latency caused by dyno sleep cycles.
Database Options
Heroku's managed database offering is limited to PostgreSQL through its add-on marketplace. Add-ons are provided by third parties, which introduces additional pricing tiers and support relationships.
Out Plane provides managed PostgreSQL, MySQL, and MongoDB directly on the platform. All database types include automated backups. If your application requires multiple database types — a common pattern for applications that use relational and document databases together — you can provision them from a single interface without managing separate vendor relationships.
Docker and Container Support
Heroku's Docker support is functional but historically treated as a secondary workflow. The platform's primary path is buildpacks, and the container registry experience is less polished than the standard git push workflow.
Out Plane supports both Dockerfiles and Paketo Buildpacks as first-class deployment methods. You can switch between them per application. Docker builds get the same deployment pipeline, logging, and monitoring as buildpack deployments.
Auto-Scaling
Heroku's auto-scaling on Standard and Performance dynos requires manual configuration of scale rules based on response time thresholds. Scaling horizontally on lower-tier plans requires manual dyno count adjustments through the dashboard or CLI.
Out Plane scales automatically based on traffic. You configure minimum and maximum instance counts, and the platform adjusts within those bounds without manual intervention.
When Heroku Still Makes Sense
A fair comparison acknowledges that Heroku remains a valid choice in certain situations.
Existing applications deeply integrated with the Heroku ecosystem. If your application relies on specific Heroku add-ons, Heroku Postgres with long-established backups, or Heroku pipelines with review apps, migrating requires careful planning. The operational risk of migration may outweigh the cost savings, especially for stable production applications that are not actively developed.
Enterprise teams with Heroku support contracts. Salesforce offers enterprise-grade support agreements for Heroku at the organizational level. Teams that have negotiated these contracts and rely on that support structure have a legitimate reason to stay.
Teams built around Heroku pipelines. Heroku's review apps and pipeline promotion model is mature and well-understood. Organizations that have standardized on this workflow may find switching disruptive to established development practices.
The point is not that Heroku is a bad platform. It pioneered developer-friendly deployment and continues to serve millions of applications. The issue is value for money relative to alternatives that have emerged since.
When Out Plane Is a Better Fit
New projects starting from scratch. Without migration costs or legacy integrations, new projects benefit immediately from per-second billing, always-on instances, and $20 free credit to evaluate the platform before committing.
Cost-sensitive developers and teams. Independent developers, bootstrapped startups, and teams optimizing infrastructure costs see the most benefit from per-second billing and the absence of fixed dyno charges.
Applications with variable traffic. Any application that experiences significant traffic fluctuation — whether by time of day, day of week, or seasonal patterns — benefits from billing that tracks actual usage rather than provisioned capacity.
Applications requiring multiple database types. If your architecture combines PostgreSQL with MongoDB or MySQL, managing them through a single platform without separate vendor relationships simplifies operations and billing.
Teams wanting a modern Docker-first workflow. If your team is comfortable with containers and wants Docker to be the primary deployment method rather than a secondary path, Out Plane treats it as a first-class workflow.
How to Migrate from Heroku
Migrating from Heroku to Out Plane is a straightforward process for most web applications. Here's a practical path.
Step 1: Export Your Environment Variables
In the Heroku CLI, export your current configuration:
heroku config -a your-app-nameCopy the output. You'll paste these values into Out Plane's environment variable editor during setup.
Step 2: Prepare Your Application
Out Plane supports both Dockerfiles and Procfile-based buildpack deployments. If your application already has a Procfile, it works without modification.
Existing Procfile (no changes needed):
web: node server.js
worker: node worker.js
Or add a Dockerfile for more control:
FROM node:20-alpine
WORKDIR /app
COPY package*.json ./
RUN npm ci --only=production
COPY . .
EXPOSE 3000
CMD ["node", "server.js"]If your application uses a common framework (Node.js, Python, Ruby, Go, PHP, Java), Paketo Buildpacks will detect it automatically without a Dockerfile.
Step 3: Migrate Your Database
Export your Heroku Postgres data:
heroku pg:backups:capture -a your-app-name
heroku pg:backups:download -a your-app-nameThis produces a latest.dump file in pg_dump format. After provisioning a managed PostgreSQL database on Out Plane, restore the dump:
pg_restore --no-acl --no-owner -d your-connection-string latest.dumpStep 4: Connect Your Repository and Deploy
- Navigate to console.outplane.com and sign in with GitHub
- Select your repository and branch
- Choose Dockerfile or Buildpack as the build method
- Paste your environment variables using the Raw Edit input
- Click Deploy
Out Plane pulls your code, builds it, and deploys it automatically. Subsequent pushes to your configured branch trigger redeployments without any additional action.
Step 5: Update Your Domain
In your DNS provider, update the CNAME record for your custom domain to point to your Out Plane application URL. SSL certificates are provisioned automatically within minutes of DNS propagation.
Once you've verified the application is running correctly on Out Plane, you can remove the Heroku application from your account.
Summary
Heroku's removal of its free tier and the structural limitations of fixed dyno pricing have made it a less competitive option for developers who prioritize cost efficiency and modern tooling. The platform still serves its existing enterprise customer base well, but for new projects and teams re-evaluating their infrastructure, better alternatives exist.
Out Plane addresses the core issues directly: per-second billing eliminates wasted spend on idle compute, always-on instances remove cold start delays, and native support for PostgreSQL, MySQL, and MongoDB covers most application database requirements. The migration path from Heroku is straightforward — your Procfile works unchanged, environment variables transfer directly, and GitHub integration enables the same git push workflow you're already using.
Ready to switch? Get started with Out Plane and receive $20 in free credit.