Heroku pricing explained: dynos, databases and what you'll really pay

How Heroku's pricing works: Eco, Basic, Standard and Performance dynos, Postgres and Key-Value Store prices, worked monthly examples and how to keep costs down.

1. How Heroku charges

On Heroku you pay for each dyno (the containers your app runs in), plus each add-on such as a database or Redis. Figures from Heroku's pricing page and Dev Center, checked on November 1, 2026. Heroku's pricing page doesn't list a free plan.

2. Dyno prices

The common dynos on Heroku's standard runtime, per month:

• Eco: $5 for the plan, 512 MB. Sleeps after 30 minutes without traffic. Personal accounts only.
• Basic: $7, 512 MB, always on.
• Standard-1X: $25, 512 MB.
• Standard-2X: $50, 1 GB.
• Performance-M: $250, 2.5 GB, dedicated compute.
• Performance-L: $500, 14 GB, dedicated compute.

Each dyno is priced on its own, so a web dyno plus a worker dyno is two dynos. Larger Performance dynos and private dynos in Private Spaces cost more.

3. How the Eco plan really works

The Eco plan isn't a dyno per app. It's $5 a month for a pool of 1,000 dyno hours, shared by every Eco dyno on your account. Sleeping web dynos don't use hours, but worker dynos never sleep, and review apps and Heroku CI count against the pool too.

When the hours run out, every Eco dyno on your account sleeps for the rest of the month, and you can't buy more hours. Heroku emails you at 80% and 100%.

4. Databases and Redis

• Postgres Essential-0: $5 a month, 1 GB, 20 connections
• Postgres Essential-1: $9 a month, 10 GB
• Postgres Essential-2: $20 a month, 32 GB
• Postgres Standard-0: $50 a month, 4 GB of memory, 64 GB of storage, on a dedicated server
• Key-Value Store (Redis) Mini: $3 a month, 25 MB; Premium 0: $15 a month, 50 MB

5. Worked examples

• A hobby app that can sleep: the Eco plan, $5 a month, plus a $5 Essential-0 database: $10.
• A small app that must stay awake: a Basic dyno ($7) and Essential-0 Postgres ($5): $12 a month.
• A small business app with a background job: two Standard-1X dynos ($50) and Standard-0 Postgres ($50): $100 a month.

6. How to keep your Heroku bill down

• Use Basic, not Standard, for small apps that don't need to scale to more than one dyno.
• Don't run a worker dyno you don't need: every dyno is billed.
• Start databases on Essential and move up when you hit the storage or connection limits.
• On Eco, turn off uptime pingers: they keep dynos awake and use your hours.

7. When a flat price fits better

If you're running a website or web app and want it always on without paying per dyno, Cloudzyro includes the compute in a flat price per site. The free Launch plan never sleeps and allows business use, with 1 CPU, 512 MB of memory and 100 GB of traffic. Boost is $20 a month per site with 2 CPUs, 2 GB of memory and 1 TB of traffic. Bring your database from Supabase or Neon, and your Node.js app runs as it did on Heroku, listening on PORT.

See Heroku alternatives for a side-by-side table.

8. Sources

• Heroku pricing
• Heroku: Eco dyno hours