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Heroku Alternatives in 2026 (After Heroku Stopped Adding Features)

Salesforce moved Heroku into 'sustaining engineering' in February 2026 — no new features. Where Heroku users are going: Render, Railway, Fly.io, DigitalOcean App Platform, self-hosted PaaS like Coolify, or a plain VPS — with honest trade-offs for each.

Heroku made "git push and your app is live" the standard. In February 2026, Salesforce announced Heroku was moving into sustaining engineering: security and stability updates continue, existing customers can keep using and renewing, but no new features are being developed, and new enterprise contracts are no longer offered.

Nothing breaks overnight. But "no roadmap" is a reason many teams are planning a move. Here are the realistic options.

What to look for in a replacement

  • Git-based deploys — push and it builds.
  • Managed Postgres (and Redis) with backups.
  • Background workers and scheduled jobs — Heroku's worker dynos and Scheduler. (Background jobs)
  • Environment variables, logs, rollbacks.
  • Predictable cost — usage-based pricing can surprise you.

Render

The closest in spirit to Heroku: web services, background workers, cron jobs, managed Postgres and Redis, preview environments, all from a Git repo or a render.yaml blueprint.

  • Good: familiar model, clear dashboard, Docker or native builds.
  • Watch for: free web services sleep after inactivity (slow first request); free databases expire. Paid instance sizes add up as you scale.

Railway

Deploy from Git or templates, with a visual canvas showing your services and databases. Usage-based pricing on top of a small monthly plan.

  • Good: very fast to get running, nice developer experience, databases in a click.
  • Watch for: usage billing makes monthly cost harder to predict; no permanent free tier.

Fly.io

Runs your app as lightweight VMs in many regions close to users.

  • Good: global deployment, low latency worldwide, powerful.
  • Watch for: more to learn (its CLI and config), pay-as-you-go with no free tier for new accounts; databases need more care.

(Render vs Railway vs Fly.io)

DigitalOcean App Platform

DigitalOcean's PaaS, with managed databases from the same provider.

  • Good: straightforward, predictable plans, solid managed databases.
  • Watch for: fewer conveniences than Render or Railway.

Self-hosted PaaS: Coolify, Dokploy, Dokku

Install a Heroku-like platform on your own VPS. Much cheaper for the resources, full control.

A plain VPS

Hetzner, DigitalOcean and others. Cheapest per CPU and GB, most control, most work: you set up the web server, HTTPS, process management, database backups and security yourself. (Deploy a Node.js app to a VPS, Hetzner vs DigitalOcean)

Quick comparison

Option Ease Cost at small scale Control You maintain
Render High Medium Medium App only
Railway High Varies with usage Medium App only
Fly.io Medium Varies High App + some infra
DO App Platform High Medium Medium App only
Coolify / Dokploy Medium Low High Server + platform
Plain VPS Low Lowest Full Everything

Migrating from Heroku

  1. Inventory — dynos, add-ons, config vars, scheduler jobs, custom domains.
  2. Database — pg_dump from Heroku Postgres, restore into the new provider; do a test run first, then a final sync during a short maintenance window. (Postgres backup and restore)
  3. Procfile — most platforms understand it or have an equivalent for web and worker processes.
  4. Config vars — copy to the new environment. (Environment variables)
  5. Add-ons — replace each (Redis, email, logging) with a provider or the new platform's equivalent.
  6. DNS — lower the TTL a day ahead, then switch. (DNS propagation)

EasySpawn is another option for Heroku refugees: a flat price per server that runs your web process, workers, cron jobs and Postgres together, with Git deploys, HTTPS, daily backups and Claude Code to help with the migration. See pricing or join the waitlist.

Related: VPS vs PaaS · Render vs Railway vs Fly.io · Coolify vs Dokploy · How Much Does It Cost to Run an App?

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