App hosting and PaaS

Heroku vs Render

Heroku has no free tier and has been in sustaining-engineering mode since February 2026; Render offers the same service model with a free Hobby workspace, flat workspace plans and fixed instance prices.

§1

The short answer

The model is almost the same: push code, pick a size, and run web processes, workers and Postgres. Heroku’s cheapest always-on dyno is Basic at $7 a month with 0.5 GB; Eco dynos at $5 share a pool of hours and sleep after 30 minutes idle. Render’s Starter instance also lists $7 for 512 MB, on a free Hobby workspace or a $25 Pro workspace with unlimited members, and Render adds free static sites and free, sleeping web services.

The main question is the vendor’s direction. Since 6 February 2026 Heroku has focused on stability, security and support rather than new features, and no longer sells Enterprise contracts to new customers; card customers keep the same pricing. It still has 150+ add-ons billed on one invoice and Shield dynos for HIPAA and PCI.

Regions: Heroku’s Common Runtime offers the US and EU, with ten more through Private Spaces. Render has five, including Frankfurt and Singapore.

Choose Heroku if

You already run a working app on Heroku and need no new platform features
You rely on Heroku add-ons and pipelines billed on one invoice
You need PCI-capable dynos through Shield

Choose Render if

You are starting a new long-term project and want to avoid a platform in sustaining-engineering mode
You want free static sites and a free tier for trying things
Your team wants unlimited members for a flat $25 a month

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Side by side

	Heroku	Render
Stages	HobbyIndieStartupScale-upEnterprise	HobbyIndieStartupScale-upEnterprise
What it is	Managed PaaS	Managed PaaS
From	Eco dynos $5/mo	Starter instance from $7/mo
Free tier	None	Hobby workspace: free static sites, free web services (512 MB, 0.1 CPU) that spin down after 15 minutes idle within 750 instance hours a month, one free Postgres (1 GB, expires after 30 days) and one free 25 MB Key Value; 5 GB bandwidth, 25 services max.
Runs	Node, Ruby, Python, Java, PHP, Go, Scala, Clojure, .NET; others via buildpacks	Node, Python, Go, Rust, Ruby, Elixir, any Docker image
Free tier sleeps?	Eco dynos sleep after 30 min; Basic and up always on	Free web services sleep after 15 min; paid never
Managed DBs	Heroku Postgres, Key-Value Store (Redis)	Postgres, Key Value (Redis-compatible)
Regions	Common Runtime: US, EU; Private Spaces: 10 regions	5: Oregon, Ohio, Virginia, Frankfurt, Singapore
Open source	No	No
Self-hostable	No	No
EU data residency	Available	Available
Compliance	SOC 2, ISO 27001, PCI DSS, HIPAA	SOC 2, ISO 27001, HIPAA
Checked	28 Sept 2026	28 Sept 2026
Strengths	Mature, well-documented workflow that many developers already know. Large add-on ecosystem billed on one invoice. Compliance options (HIPAA, PCI) through Shield. Predictable per-dyno pricing.	Fixed instance prices make monthly compute cost easy to predict. Workers, cron jobs, databases and web services on one private network. Flat workspace pricing with unlimited members from $25/mo. Frankfurt region for EU data residency.
Limitations	No free tier; the cheapest dynos (Eco) sleep after 30 minutes idle. In sustaining-engineering mode since February 2026, with few new features planned. New customers can no longer buy Enterprise Account contracts. Only two regions (US, EU) outside Private Spaces.	Free web services sleep after 15 minutes idle and take about a minute to wake. Free Postgres databases expire after 30 days and have no backups. Only 5 GB of bandwidth is included on Hobby and 25 GB on Pro; more costs $0.15/GB. A service's region cannot be changed after creation, and private networks do not span regions.

Sources: Heroku pricing, Render pricing. Full plans on each tool's page.

§3

Plans

Heroku

Eco Shared pool of dyno hours for personal accounts; dynos sleep after 30 minutes idle	$5/mo
Basic 0.5 GB, always on, 10 process types	$7/mo per dyno
Standard-1X 0.5 GB, horizontal scaling, preboot, metrics	$25/mo per dyno
Standard-2X 1 GB	$50/mo per dyno
Performance-M 2.5 GB dedicated, autoscaling	$250/mo per dyno
Private-S Requires a Private Space; network isolation	$125/mo per dyno
Shield-S HIPAA BAA and PCI capable; Private Space required	$150/mo per dyno

Render

Hobby workspace 1 member, 25 services, 5 GB bandwidth, 2 custom domains	$0/mo + compute
Pro workspace Unlimited members, 25 GB bandwidth, autoscaling, full-stack previews, SOC 2/ISO reports	$25/mo + compute
Scale workspace 1 TB bandwidth, SAML SSO, SCIM, HIPAA workspaces	$499/mo + compute
Enterprise Uptime SLAs, technical account manager	Custom
Starter instance 512 MB RAM, 0.5 CPU	$7/mo
Standard instance 2 GB RAM, 1 CPU	$25/mo
Postgres Basic-256mb 0.1 CPU, 256 MB, storage $0.30/GB	$6/mo

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