Heroku
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.
Facts checked on against the sources listed at the end of this page.
- Pricing
- PaidPaid from $5 a month (Eco dyno, Cedar)
- Open source
- NoProprietary
- GitHub stars
- 888
- npm downloads a week
- 16.3kup 26% on the week before
- Latest release
- v11.11.06 days ago
- Releases in 90 days
- 4about 1 a month
A good fit for
- Teams wanting a mature, well-established platform-as-a-service with a long track record
- Applications needing managed data services (Postgres, Key-Value Store, Kafka) alongside compute in one platform
- Regulated workloads needing Private or Shield-tier isolation and compliance features
- Teams evaluating whether to move to Heroku's newer Kubernetes-powered Fir dyno generation
Not a good fit 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
Heroku pricing
Cedar dynos range from Eco at $5 a month up to Performance-2XL at $1,500 a month, with Private and Shield variants from $125 to $1,800 a month for higher isolation. Fir dynos start at $25 a month for a Classic 1CPU-0.5GB instance, with General Purpose, Compute and Memory plan families ranging from $80 to $2,400 a month. Heroku Postgres ranges from $5 to $40,000 a month across its Essential, Standard, Premium and Advanced tiers depending on size.
| Plan | Price | What you get |
|---|---|---|
| Eco (Cedar) | $5/month | Entry-level Cedar dyno for small or low-traffic apps. |
| Standard-1X (Cedar) | $25/month | Standard-tier Cedar dyno for production apps. |
| Classic 1CPU-0.5GB (Fir) | $25/month | Entry-level Kubernetes-powered Fir dyno. |
Prices in USD, checked on 27 September 2026. Current prices on heroku.com.
Main features
- Dyno-based deployment
- Applications run as scalable dynos (containers) without manual server management.
- Cedar and Fir dyno generations
- Choose between Heroku's established Cedar dynos or the newer Kubernetes-powered Fir dynos.
- Buildpacks
- Automatic build and deployment support for many languages and frameworks.
- Managed data services
- Heroku Postgres, Key-Value Store and Apache Kafka available as managed add-ons.
- Private and Shield tiers
- Higher-isolation and compliance-focused dyno tiers for regulated workloads.
About Heroku
Heroku lets developers deploy applications without managing underlying servers, packaging apps into dynos (lightweight containers) that scale up or down, and was one of the pioneering platforms in the platform-as-a-service category.
Its classic Cedar dyno generation spans from a low-cost Eco tier through Standard, Performance, Private and Shield tiers for progressively more compute, isolation and compliance requirements, priced from $5 up to $1,800 a month depending on tier and size.
Heroku has since introduced Fir, a newer Kubernetes-powered dyno generation, with its own General Purpose, Compute and Memory-optimized plan families, alongside managed data services like Heroku Postgres, Key-Value Store and Apache Kafka priced separately by tier and size.
- Made by
- Salesforce (Heroku)
- Free plan
- No free dyno tier; the lowest-cost Eco dyno starts at $5 a month
- Available on
- Web, CLI, Git-based deployment, Buildpacks
Usage and activity
Weekly npm downloads of heroku, last 12 months.
Recent releases
Heroku alternatives
Questions about Heroku
Is Heroku free?
No, there's no free dyno tier; the lowest-cost Eco dyno starts at $5 a month.
What is the difference between Cedar and Fir dynos?
Cedar is Heroku's established dyno generation, while Fir is a newer, Kubernetes-powered generation with its own plan families.
Does Heroku offer managed databases?
Yes, including Heroku Postgres, Key-Value Store and Apache Kafka, each priced separately by tier.
Sources and links
Work on Heroku? Claim this listing. Something wrong or out of date? Suggest a correction. Stats come from the public GitHub and npm APIs and update every day.