Heroku Alternatives for Indie Hackers (2026 Prices)

Short answer: If you want Heroku's workflow without Heroku, pick Render for fixed prices or Railway for usage billing. Both run a web app, worker, cron job and Postgres for about what Heroku charges. If you are comfortable owning a server, Coolify or Dokku on a Hetzner box is the cheapest option. Heroku itself still works and its prices have not changed. It just isn't getting new features.

Every price and limit below comes from the vendor's own pricing page or docs, checked on 11 Nov 2026. The advice in between is ours and marked as such.

TL;DR#

• Heroku's status: in February 2026 Heroku said it is "transitioning to a sustaining engineering model focused on stability, security, reliability, and support" (Heroku blog). Credit card pricing is unchanged.
• Heroku today: Eco $5, Basic $7, Standard-1X $25 per dyno per month. Postgres Essential-0 is $5 (Heroku pricing).
• Like-for-like swaps: Render (Starter $7, Postgres from $6) and Railway (Hobby $5/mo with $5 of usage included).
• Free and cheap: Northflank Sandbox (free, always on), Koyeb (free instance, scales to zero), Google Cloud Run (free tier each month).
• Cheapest overall: Coolify or Dokku on a EUR 5.99/mo Hetzner server, if you will own backups and updates.

Disclosure: ZeroRaised publishes this guide and is a launch site for bootstrapped products. ZeroRaised has no commercial relationship with any host listed here and earns nothing if you sign up. Facts come from the linked sources as checked on 11 Nov 2026.

Should you leave Heroku at all?#

The news is real but undramatic. On 6 Feb 2026, Heroku's CPO wrote that Heroku is moving to a sustaining engineering model, that "Enterprise Account contracts will no longer be offered to new customers," and that customers who pay by credit card in the Heroku dashboard, existing and new, can keep using Heroku with no changes to pricing, billing, service or day-to-day usage (Heroku blog).

Our read: if your app runs fine on Heroku, there is no fire. The reasons to move are cost, Eco's sleep and hours rules, and not wanting to build on a platform that will not add features. For a new project, we would not start on Heroku.

What Heroku costs in 2026#

Sources: Heroku pricing, Eco dyno hours, Heroku Postgres plans.

Two catches. Eco's 1,000 hours are shared, so a web dyno and worker running all month need more, and when the hours run out all Eco dynos sleep until the month ends. And Heroku Scheduler is "a free add-on", but jobs run on one-off dynos that "count towards your monthly usage", and Heroku says it "is known to occasionally (but rarely)" miss jobs (Scheduler docs).

Heroku baseline for our small app: Basic web $7 + Basic worker $7 + Essential-0 $5 = $19/mo, plus scheduler dyno time.

Heroku alternatives at a glance#

"Git-push deploy" here means a push to your repo triggers a deploy. Only Dokku copies Heroku's literal git push to the host.

The alternatives, one by one#

Render: the closest like-for-like#

Render's Hobby workspace is "$0 /mo + compute" and Pro is "$25 /mo + compute". Web services and background workers start at Starter, $7/mo for 512 MB and 0.5 CPU. Postgres starts at Basic-256mb for $6/mo with expandable storage at $0.30/GB. Cron jobs are "Prorated by the second", from $0.00016/minute on the smallest instance (Render pricing). The free tier spins down a web service "that goes 15 minutes without receiving any inbound traffic", and free Postgres expires 30 days after creation (Render free docs).

We compare Render and Railway in depth in Railway vs Render for indie hackers, so we keep both entries short here.

Railway: pay for what you use#

Hobby is $5/mo "including $5 of monthly usage credits", and Pro is $20/mo per workspace including $20 of usage. Usage is billed per second: about $20 per vCPU-month, $10 per GB of RAM per month, $0.15 per GB of volume and $0.05 per GB of egress. New accounts get "$5 in credits for 30 days" with no card (Railway pricing).

Fly.io: global machines, pricier Postgres#

A started shared-cpu-1x machine costs $2.19/mo with 256 MB and $3.69/mo with 512 MB. Managed Postgres starts at $38/mo (Basic), with storage at $0.28 per GB per month. Stopped machines still pay $0.15 per GB of root filesystem, and bills under $5 a month on a personal organization are waived (Fly.io pricing docs, Fly.io pricing).

Our read: cheap compute, expensive managed Postgres for a tiny app.

DigitalOcean App Platform#

Static sites are free (3 apps). Paid containers start at $5/mo for 1 vCPU and 512 MiB, and workers are billed per container. A dev database is $7/mo, but DigitalOcean notes it is not backed up by default and is destroyed with its app. Managed PostgreSQL starts at $15.15/mo for 1 GiB RAM and 1 vCPU (App Platform pricing, Managed Databases pricing).

Koyeb#

Each organization gets one free instance with "512MB of RAM, 0.1 vCPU, and 2GB of SSD", in Frankfurt or Washington, D.C. It "automatically scales down to zero when it doesn't receive any traffic for 1 hour" (Koyeb instances, scale-to-zero docs). The smallest paid CPU instance, eco-nano, is $1.61/mo. The pricing page lists a Pro plan at $29/mo plus compute with $10 of compute included, and a free Postgres tier labelled "Free 5h" with 1 GB storage (Koyeb pricing).

Northflank#

The free Sandbox includes "2 services, 2 jobs, and 1 database", "Up to $20/mo of resources on Northflank Cloud", and is "Always on, no sleeping". Paid compute starts at $12/mo for 0.5 vCPU and 1 GB, and databases are billed on CPU, memory and disk rates (Northflank pricing).

Our read: that fits our small-app shape at $0, the most generous free option we found. Read its terms before putting paying customers on it.

Google Cloud Run#

On request-based billing, the free tier includes 2 million requests, 180,000 vCPU-seconds and 360,000 GB-seconds of memory per month. Google notes these limits "aren't credit; they don't accumulate or roll over" (Google Cloud free features). You still need a database elsewhere.

Coolify, Dokku and Kamal on your own server#

• Coolify describes itself as an "Open-source and self-hostable platform to deploy apps, databases and services to your own servers". Self-hosting is "Free forever". Coolify Cloud, which manages your servers for you, is "$5 /month base price (connect 2 servers)" plus $3/mo per extra server (Coolify pricing).
• Dokku calls itself "An open source PAAS alternative to Heroku": "you can push Heroku-compatible applications to it via Git. They'll build using Heroku buildpacks" (Dokku).
• Kamal, from 37signals, says "Deploy web apps anywhere" (Kamal) and is MIT licensed (GitHub).

For the server, Hetzner's CX23 is 2 vCPU, 4 GB RAM and 40 GB NVMe for EUR 5.99/mo excl. VAT. When we checked, Hetzner's page showed "This product is currently unavailable. Please check back later." next to its cheapest plans, so check stock before you plan around it (Hetzner Cloud). Our best VPS for indie hackers guide compares more providers.

Worked example: a small SaaS each month#

This example is ours. It uses the prices above for one web process, one background worker, an hourly cron job and a small Postgres database (1 GB).

Railway's figure moves with real usage; the Railway line is an illustration, not a quote. Prices exclude tax and bandwidth overages.

Our read: below about $25 a month, your time matters more than the price gap, so pick the platform you will not have to think about: Render for flat bills, Railway for idle apps, Northflank for $0. Once your bill passes $50, a VPS with Coolify or Dokku looks attractive, as long as you set up backups.

Migration checklist from Heroku#

1. List what you run. Note every process in your Procfile (web, worker, release) and every add-on:

   heroku ps -a myapp
   heroku addons -a myapp
   

2. Export config vars. Copy them into the new platform's environment settings, then remove the file:

   heroku config -s -a myapp > heroku.env
   

3. Recreate processes. Each Procfile line becomes a service (web, worker, or a pre-deploy command for release). Scheduler jobs become cron jobs.

4. Replace add-ons with managed services or standalone vendors, keeping the env var names your code expects (DATABASE_URL, REDIS_URL).

5. Lower your DNS TTL a day before the cutover.

6. Move Postgres. Freeze writes, take a fresh backup, then restore it:

   heroku maintenance:on -a myapp
   heroku pg:backups:capture -a myapp
   curl -o latest.dump "$(heroku pg:backups:url -a myapp)"
   pg_restore --verbose --clean --no-acl --no-owner -d "$NEW_DATABASE_URL" latest.dump
   

7. Test on the new host's URL: sign up, log in, run a test payment, trigger the worker and cron job.

8. Cut over DNS once the custom domain and TLS are live, then watch logs.

9. Keep Heroku for a week as a rollback, then scale dynos to zero and remove add-ons so billing stops.

Our read: only the database step needs a maintenance window. Do it at your quietest hour.

Frequently asked questions#

Is Heroku shutting down?#

Not according to Heroku. On 6 Feb 2026 Heroku said it is transitioning to a sustaining engineering model focused on stability, security, reliability and support. Enterprise Account contracts are no longer offered to new customers, and credit card customers can keep using Heroku with no changes to pricing, billing or service.

What is the cheapest Heroku alternative for a small app?#

If you can run a server, a Hetzner CX23 at EUR 5.99/mo with Coolify (free to self-host) or Dokku (open source) runs a web app, worker and Postgres on one box. If you want a managed platform, Northflank's free Sandbox covers 2 services, 2 jobs and 1 database, and Railway Hobby starts at $5/mo including $5 of usage.

What is the closest alternative to Heroku?#

Render is the closest in shape: separate web, worker and cron services, managed Postgres and fixed prices, with Starter instances at $7/mo. Railway is just as easy to use but bills per second. Dokku is the closest in workflow, because you git push and it builds with Heroku buildpacks.

Does any Heroku alternative have a free tier?#

Yes. Render has free web services that spin down after 15 minutes without traffic and free Postgres that expires after 30 days. Koyeb has one free instance per organization that scales to zero after an hour idle. Northflank's Sandbox is always on. Google Cloud Run includes 2 million requests, 180,000 vCPU-seconds and 360,000 GB-seconds per month free.

How do I move my Postgres database off Heroku?#

Put the app in maintenance mode, capture a backup with heroku pg:backups:capture, download it with the URL from heroku pg:backups:url, then load it into the new database with pg_restore using --no-owner and --no-acl. Copy your config vars, test on the new host, then switch DNS.

Ship it, then launch it#

Once your app is on its new host, use our guide on how to launch a bootstrapped app to plan the launch, then submit your product to ZeroRaised for free. For more hosting comparisons and bootstrapped playbooks, join the ZeroRaised newsletter.

Sources#

• Heroku: An Update on Heroku, last checked 11 Nov 2026
• Heroku pricing, last checked 11 Nov 2026
• Heroku Dev Center: Eco dyno hours, last checked 11 Nov 2026
• Heroku Dev Center: Heroku Postgres plans, last checked 11 Nov 2026
• Heroku Dev Center: Scheduler, last checked 11 Nov 2026
• Render pricing, last checked 11 Nov 2026
• Render free instances, last checked 11 Nov 2026
• Railway pricing, last checked 11 Nov 2026
• Fly.io pricing, last checked 11 Nov 2026
• Fly.io pricing docs, last checked 11 Nov 2026
• DigitalOcean App Platform pricing, last checked 11 Nov 2026
• DigitalOcean Managed Databases pricing, last checked 11 Nov 2026
• Koyeb pricing, last checked 11 Nov 2026
• Koyeb instances, last checked 11 Nov 2026
• Koyeb scale-to-zero, last checked 11 Nov 2026
• Northflank pricing, last checked 11 Nov 2026
• Google Cloud free features, last checked 11 Nov 2026
• Coolify pricing, last checked 11 Nov 2026
• Hetzner Cloud cost-optimized plans, last checked 11 Nov 2026
• Dokku, last checked 11 Nov 2026
• Kamal, last checked 11 Nov 2026
• Kamal on GitHub, last checked 11 Nov 2026