Cloudflare Workers
Serverless functions that run on Cloudflare's global network, billed by CPU time.
Pricing FreemiumPaid from $5 a month minimum per accountOpen source noStars 9.1knpm a week 30M
Heroku alternatives
11 tools you can use instead of Heroku, ranked by live GitHub stars and npm downloads. Cloudflare Workers, Cloudflare Pages and Vercel are the most used. Stats updated 5 hours ago.
Render and Railway are the closest alternatives: both deploy web apps, databases and background jobs from Git. Fly.io runs apps close to users and bills by the second. Coolify is open source and free to self-host.
When Heroku is not a good fit
Heroku is a platform-as-a-service for deploying and running applications as dynos (containers), one of the earliest and most established PaaS platforms. It offers both its classic Cedar dyno lineup, starting at $5 a month for an Eco dyno, and a newer Kubernetes-powered Fir dyno lineup starting at $25 a month.
It is a weaker choice for:
- Very cost-sensitive small projects, since there's no free dyno tier and pricing starts at $5 a month
- Teams wanting the absolute latest cloud-native tooling without navigating two parallel dyno generations (Cedar and Fir)
- High-traffic applications where per-dyno costs can rise quickly compared to some newer, more granularly billed platforms
The alternatives
Most used first.
View Cloudflare Workers
Cloudflare Pages
JAMstack hosting platform with Git integration and unlimited bandwidth, deployed on Cloudflare's edge network.
Pricing FreemiumPaid from $20-$25 a month (Pro plan)Open source noStars 4.7knpm a week 30M
Vercel
Cloud platform for deploying web apps and frameworks like Next.js, with preview URLs and serverless functions.
Pricing FreemiumPaid from $20 a month for Pro, including one deploying seat and $20 of usage creditOpen source noStars 16.4knpm a week 5.3M
Coolify
Open source, self-hostable alternative to Vercel, Heroku, Netlify and Railway for deploying apps.
Pricing FreemiumPaid from $5 a month for Coolify Cloud, connecting up to 2 serversOpen source yesStars 64.5k
Dokploy
Open source, self-hostable platform as a service for deploying apps and databases with Docker.
Pricing Open sourcePaid from $4.50 a month per server for Dokploy Cloud HobbyOpen source yesStars 38k
AWS Amplify
AWS's platform for building and hosting full-stack web and mobile apps, priced pay-as-you-go.
Pricing Pay as you goPaid from $0.01 per build minute (Standard instance) beyond the free tierOpen source noStars 9.6knpm a week 2.2M
Netlify
Web platform for deploying sites and apps from Git, the CLI or AI agents, with functions, storage and Postgres.
Pricing FreemiumPaid from $9 a month for Personal (1,000 credits)Open source noStars 1.9knpm a week 476k
Railway
Usage-billed cloud platform for deploying apps, databases and cron jobs from GitHub or Docker images.
Pricing Pay as you goPaid from $5 a month for Hobby, including $5 of usageOpen source noStars 626npm a week 415k
Fly.io
Platform for running apps and databases close to users globally, billed by the second for compute used.
Pricing Pay as you goPaid from About $1.94 a month (shared-cpu-1x, 256MB, running continuously)Open source noStars 1.7k
DigitalOcean App Platform
Platform-as-a-service for deploying apps from Git or a container registry, from a free static-site tier.
Pricing FreemiumPaid from $5 a month (Shared Fixed instance, 512 MiB)Open source no
Render
Cloud platform for deploying web apps, APIs, databases and background jobs from a Git repo.
Pricing FreemiumPaid from $25 a month for the Pro workspace plan, plus usage-based compute, bandwidth and storageOpen source no
Heroku and its alternatives, side by side
| Tool | Pricing | Free plan | Paid from | Open source | GitHub stars |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Heroku | Paid | No free dyno tier; the lowest-cost Eco dyno starts at $5 a month | $5 a month (Eco dyno, Cedar) | No | 886 |
| Cloudflare Workers | Freemium | Yes: 100,000 requests a day and 10 ms of CPU time per invocation | $5 a month minimum per account | No | 9.1k |
| Cloudflare Pages | Freemium | Yes: 500 builds a month, 1 concurrent build, 100 custom domains per project, unlimited sites and bandwidth | $20-$25 a month (Pro plan) | No | 4.7k |
| Vercel | Freemium | Yes: Hobby, for personal and non-commercial use, with 100 GB of fast data transfer and 1 million function invocations a month | $20 a month for Pro, including one deploying seat and $20 of usage credit | No | 16.4k |
| Coolify | Freemium | Yes: self-hosting Coolify on your own infrastructure is free forever with full access to all features | $5 a month for Coolify Cloud, connecting up to 2 servers | Yes, Apache-2.0 | 64.5k |
| Dokploy | Open source | Yes. Self-hosting is free. Dokploy Cloud is paid. | $4.50 a month per server for Dokploy Cloud Hobby | Yes, Apache-2.0, with a proprietary license for the /proprietary directories | 38k |
| AWS Amplify | Pay as you go | Yes: AWS Free Tier includes 1,000 build minutes, 5 GB storage and 15 GB data transfer a month for 12 months | $0.01 per build minute (Standard instance) beyond the free tier | No | 9.6k |
| Netlify | Freemium | Yes: 300 credits a month, with a hard limit and no option to buy more | $9 a month for Personal (1,000 credits) | No | 1.9k |
| Railway | Pay as you go | Yes: a 30-day trial with a one-time $5 credit, then a free plan with $1 of credit a month (0.5 GB RAM and 1 vCPU per service) | $5 a month for Hobby, including $5 of usage | No | 626 |
| Fly.io | Pay as you go | Limited free usage may be available for small workloads; primarily pay-as-you-go | About $1.94 a month (shared-cpu-1x, 256MB, running continuously) | No | 1.7k |
| DigitalOcean App Platform | Freemium | Yes: up to 3 apps with static sites and 1 GiB data transfer per app | $5 a month (Shared Fixed instance, 512 MiB) | No | None |
| Render | Freemium | Yes: the Hobby workspace plan, free services with 512 MB RAM and 5 GB bandwidth a month included | $25 a month for the Pro workspace plan, plus usage-based compute, bandwidth and storage | No | None |
Pricing facts come from each tool's official pricing page, with the checked date on the tool's own page.
Questions
What is the most popular alternative to Heroku?
By GitHub stars, Cloudflare Workers is the most used alternative to Heroku listed on ScratchDB, with 9.1k stars.
Which Heroku alternatives are open source?
Coolify and Dokploy are open source.
Which Heroku alternatives have a free plan?
Cloudflare Workers, Cloudflare Pages, Vercel, Coolify, Dokploy, AWS Amplify, Netlify, Railway, DigitalOcean App Platform and Render have a free plan. The table on this page shows what each one includes.