Heroku vs Vercel
Kofi Agyem, Founder and CEO, CloudzyroPublished · Updated
Heroku and Vercel side by side on price, limits and how they charge, from each company's own pricing pages, with Cloudzyro as a third option.
| Feature | Heroku | Vercel | Cloudzyro |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free plan | None listed; Eco is $5 a month and sleeps after 30 minutes | Hobby: personal, non-commercial use only | Launch: free, business use included, never sleeps |
| Paid plan | Basic dyno $7 a month; Standard from $25 per dyno | Pro: $20 a month per developer seat | Boost: $20 a month per site, team included |
| How your app runs | Long-lived dynos | Frontends and serverless functions | A long-lived server |
| Team pricing | Priced per dyno and add-on | $20 a month per developer seat; viewer seats free | Never per seat |
Other companies' figures from Heroku pricing, Vercel pricing, checked November 1, 2026. Prices change, so check their pages before you decide.
The short answer
Heroku runs your app as long-lived dynos, priced one by one, alongside add-ons such as Heroku Postgres. Vercel is built for frontends and serverless functions, priced at $20 a month per developer seat on Pro. Choose Heroku for classic backend apps and workers; choose Vercel for Next.js and frontends. Cloudzyro is a third option: a long-lived server at a flat price per site, with a free plan that never sleeps.
Free plans
Heroku's pricing page lists no free plan. Its cheapest option is Eco, $5 a month for 1,000 dyno hours shared by your personal apps, which sleep after 30 minutes without traffic.
Vercel's Hobby plan is free for personal, non-commercial use, with 100 GB of transfer a month and no way to buy more.
Cloudzyro's Launch plan is free with business use allowed, and sites never sleep.
What a small team pays
On Heroku, you pay per dyno, not per person: a Basic dyno is $7 a month, Standard-1X $25 and Standard-2X $50, plus any add-ons. On Vercel Pro, each developer seat is $20 a month, so three developers pay $60 before usage beyond what's included. Cloudzyro Boost is $20 a month per site, whatever the size of the team, with 2 CPUs, 2 GB of memory and 1 TB of traffic.
Servers or functions
Heroku keeps your app running as a process, which suits APIs, background workers and apps that hold connections open. Vercel runs your server code as functions on demand, which suits frontends with light server code. Cloudzyro runs your site or app as an always-on server, like Heroku, and serves static files through Cloudflare.
Which should you choose?
Choose Heroku if you're already on it and rely on its add-on marketplace and workers. Choose Vercel if your Next.js frontend leans on its platform. Choose Cloudzyro if you want your website or web app always on, free to start and then one flat price per site, deployed from your AI tool, Git or a zip.