Heroku alternatives
Kofi Agyem, Founder and CEO, CloudzyroPublished
What to look for when you move off Heroku, and how the main alternatives compare, from each company's own pricing pages.
| Feature | Cloudzyro | Heroku |
|---|---|---|
| Free plan | Launch: free, business use included | None listed; the lowest prices are $5 a month |
| Paid plan | Boost: $20 a month per site, team members included | Eco dynos $5 a month, Basic $7, Standard from $25 per dyno |
| Sites sleep when quiet | Never, on the free plan too | Eco dynos sleep after 30 minutes without traffic |
Other companies' figures from Heroku pricing, Render: updated workspace plans, Railway pricing, Vercel pricing, checked October 31, 2026. Prices change, so check their pages before you decide.
Why people look for a Heroku alternative
Heroku's pricing page lists no free plan: its lowest prices are $5 a month for Eco dynos, which sleep after 30 minutes without traffic, and $7 for Basic. Many people want a free tier for side projects, apps that don't sleep, or a simpler flat price.
What to compare
Whether there's a free plan you can use for business, whether apps sleep when quiet, how compute and traffic are billed, whether team members cost extra, and how you deploy (Git, a zip or straight from an AI tool).
Render
Pro is $25 a month flat plus compute, with workers and scheduled jobs. Free web services spin down after 15 minutes without traffic.
Railway
Hobby is $5 and Pro $20 a month per workspace, each including that much usage, then CPU, memory and traffic are billed as you use them.
Vercel
Built for frontends and serverless functions. Hobby is free for personal, non-commercial use; Pro is $20 a month per developer seat.
Cloudzyro
Your Node.js app runs as a long-lived server that never sleeps, on the free Launch plan too, with business use allowed. Boost is $20 a month per site with 2 CPUs, 2 GB of memory and 1 TB of traffic, and the team included. Deploy from Git, a zip, or straight from Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor or Codex.
Moving from Heroku
A Node.js app needs a build script and a start script, and must listen on the PORT environment variable, which Heroku apps already do. Connect your Git repository, add your config vars as environment variables, move your database to a provider such as Supabase or Neon, then point your domain at us.