Guide

Heroku alternatives, including the ones that run in your own AWS account

By Muhammad Soliman, Founder at SeaGit · Verified September 2026

Teams leave Heroku for three reasons, and which one applies decides where you should go. The first is cost: dyno pricing is predictable but expensive once you are running more than a handful, and the free tier is gone. The second is control: a dyno is a good abstraction until you need a specific instance type, a GPU, a private network or a compliance boundary, at which point the abstraction is in the way. The third is ownership, the requirement to say exactly which cloud account and region a workload runs in. If cost alone is the problem, another hosted platform such as Railway or Render solves it with the same shape of product. If control or ownership is the problem, only a bring-your-own-cloud platform does — one that runs the workload in your own AWS, Azure or GCP account while keeping the push-to-deploy experience that made Heroku worth using.

The list is grouped by that decision: hosted replacements first, then the platforms that deploy into an account you own.

  1. 1. Railway

    A usage-based PaaS that deploys apps and databases on Railway-managed infrastructure.

    Best for
    The closest "it just works" replacement, with databases and a modern developer experience.
    Not for you if
    Still someone else’s infrastructure, so the control and ownership reasons for leaving Heroku remain unsolved.
    Pricing model
    Railway prices by usage (compute/memory) on Railway-managed infrastructure with trial credits rather than a permanent free tier; you cannot bring your own cloud account.
    Railway pricingSeaGit vs Railway

  2. 2. Render

    A managed cloud PaaS that runs web services and databases on Render-owned infrastructure.

    Best for
    Teams who liked Heroku’s service model and want predictable per-service pricing.
    Not for you if
    Hosted only — no cloud account of your own, no Kubernetes access.
    Pricing model
    Render prices per-service/usage on Render-owned infrastructure with a limited free tier; you cannot bring your own cloud account.
    Render pricingSeaGit vs Render

  3. 3. SeaGit

    Managed Kubernetes and deployments inside your own AWS, Azure or GCP account, with GitOps CI/CD, ephemeral preview environments, DNS and TLS handled for you.

    Best for
    Teams that want a push-to-deploy experience but need the infrastructure to stay in an account they own — for cost, compliance or exit reasons.
    Not for you if
    You need a cloud account and a willingness to own it. If you want someone else to hold the infrastructure entirely and never think about a VPC, a hosted PaaS is a better fit.
    Pricing model
    Flat per-seat platform fee with a free plan; your cloud provider bills you directly for compute, with no infrastructure markup.
    Details

  4. 4. Porter

    A Kubernetes-powered PaaS that runs in your own cloud account.

    Best for
    Teams that explicitly want "Heroku, but on our own Kubernetes".
    Not for you if
    You are operating Kubernetes whether or not you wanted to think about it.
    Pricing model
    Porter offers a free tier and paid plans priced per-cluster/usage; you also pay your own cloud provider for the underlying infrastructure.
    Porter pricingSeaGit vs Porter

  5. 5. Northflank

    A developer platform with a bring-your-own-cloud (BYOC) option.

    Best for
    A polished platform with BYOC available higher up the plans.
    Not for you if
    The bring-your-own-cloud capability is not on the entry tiers.
    Pricing model
    Northflank offers a free tier and usage-based paid plans, with bring-your-own-cloud on higher tiers; underlying infrastructure is billed by your cloud provider under BYOC.
    Northflank pricingSeaGit vs Northflank

  6. 6. Qovery

    A developer platform that deploys apps into your own cloud account.

    Best for
    Platform teams building an internal developer platform on their own AWS footprint.
    Not for you if
    Abstraction layer, not a managed cluster service — the cloud design stays yours.
    Pricing model
    Qovery prices per-seat with a free starter tier; you additionally pay your own cloud provider for the underlying infrastructure.
    Qovery pricingSeaGit vs Qovery

Vendor descriptions and pricing models were checked against each vendor's public site as of September 2026. Prices and limits change; the links above go to the current pages.

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Frequently asked

What is the closest thing to Heroku today?

For the hosted experience, Railway and Render are the nearest equivalents: connect a repository, get a running service, add a database. For the Heroku experience on infrastructure you own, look at bring-your-own-cloud platforms such as SeaGit, Porter or Northflank, which keep push-to-deploy while the workload runs in your own cloud account.

Is there a free Heroku alternative?

Yes, several platforms offer a free plan since Heroku retired its own. On bring-your-own-cloud platforms such as SeaGit the platform fee can be free while your cloud provider bills you for compute directly — which for small workloads on a free-tier-eligible cloud account can be very cheap, but is not the same as "free hosting".

How do I move from Heroku to AWS without running Kubernetes myself?

That is precisely what a bring-your-own-cloud platform does: it provisions managed Kubernetes — Amazon EKS — inside your AWS account, installs the ingress, DNS and certificate machinery, and gives you a deploy pipeline on top. You get AWS ownership and billing without operating the cluster by hand.

Will my Heroku add-ons transfer?

No. Add-ons are Heroku marketplace products, and moving means replacing each one with a managed cloud service, a Helm chart running in your cluster, or a third-party SaaS. Databases are usually the biggest piece of that work, so plan the data migration before the application migration.