Heroku vs Northflank Pricing (2026)
How do these two stack up on price? Here's what each one costs, what you get, and where the value sits.
| Heroku | Northflank | |
|---|---|---|
| Starts at | $5/mo | Custom |
| Number of plans | 9 | 3 |
| Free plan | — | |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Pricing model | usage-based | usage-based |
Eco
- Deploy with Git and Docker
- Custom domains
- Unified logs
- 2 process types
- Container orchestration
- Automatic OS patching
- Automated certificate management
- Personal accounts only
- Sleeps after 30 minutes of inactivity
Basic
- Includes all Eco features
- Free SSL
- 10 process types
- Always on
- 0.28 Dyno Units / Month
Standard-1X
- Includes all Basic features
- Simple horizontal scalability
- App metrics and threshold alerts
- Preboot and zero-downtime deploys
- Unlimited process types
- Unlimited background workers
- Can combine with Performance dynos
- 1 Dyno Units / Month
Standard-2X
- Includes all Basic features
- Simple horizontal scalability
- App metrics and threshold alerts
- Preboot and zero-downtime deploys
- Unlimited process types
- Unlimited background workers
- Can combine with Performance dynos
- 2 Dyno Units / Month
Performance-M
- Includes all Standard features
- Predictable performance for your highest traffic applications
- Dedicated compute resources
- Autoscaling
- Can mix with Standard dynos
- 8 Dyno Units / Month
Performance-L
- Includes all Standard features
- Predictable performance for your highest traffic applications
- Dedicated compute resources
- Autoscaling
- Can mix with Standard dynos
- 16 Dyno Units / Month
Performance-L-RAM
- Includes all Standard features
- Predictable performance for your highest traffic applications
- Dedicated compute resources
- Autoscaling
- Can mix with Standard dynos
- 16 Dyno Units / Month
Performance-XL
- Includes all Standard features
- Predictable performance for your highest traffic applications
- Dedicated compute resources
- Autoscaling
- Can mix with Standard dynos
- 30 Dyno Units / Month
Performance-2XL
- Includes all Standard features
- Predictable performance for your highest traffic applications
- Dedicated compute resources
- Autoscaling
- Can mix with Standard dynos
- 60 Dyno Units / Month
Developer
- Projects
- Services
- Jobs
- Addons
- Secret groups
- Pipelines
- Compute
- Continuous integration
- Build with Dockerfiles
- Build with Buildpacks
- Advanced builds
- GitHub, GitLab & Bitbucket integration
- Self-hosted GitLab integration
- Azure DevOps integration
- Continuous deployment
- Continuous delivery
- Deploy container images built on Northflank
- Deploy container images from external registries
- Rollback and select specific builds
- Volumes and persistence
- GPUs
- UI / API / CLI access
- Templates
- GitOps
- Workflows
- Real-time platform
- Platform SDK
- Users
- Fine-grained RBAC
- Organisations
- Custom domains
- Automatic TLS & DNS
- Load balancing across instances
- Northflank proxy
- Service mesh and mTLS
- Network security
- Datastores you know and love
- Queues
- High availability
- Backups & restores
- Fork databases
- Zonal redundancy
- Vertical scaling
- Horizontal scaling
- Autoscaling
- Real-time log tailing
- Real-time metrics
- Log manipulation
- 30 day retention
- Log sinks
- Alerting
- Notifications
- Northflank's managed cloud
- Northflank's regions
- Cloud providers
- AWS
- Azure
- GCP
- CoreWeave
- Oracle
- Civo
- Bring your own Kubernetes
- Cloud credits
- Savings Plans, Commits, and Spot
- Cloud
- Logs
- Metrics
- Support
- To the second billing
- Invoice history
- Pricing
Pay as you go
- Projects
- Services
- Jobs
- Addons
- Secret groups
- Pipelines
- Compute
- Continuous integration
- Build with Dockerfiles
- Build with Buildpacks
- Advanced builds
- GitHub, GitLab & Bitbucket integration
- Self-hosted GitLab integration
- Azure DevOps integration
- Continuous deployment
- Continuous delivery
- Deploy container images built on Northflank
- Deploy container images from external registries
- Rollback and select specific builds
- Volumes and persistence
- GPUs
- UI / API / CLI access
- Templates
- GitOps
- Workflows
- Real-time platform
- Platform SDK
- Users
- Fine-grained RBAC
- Organisations
- Custom domains
- Automatic TLS & DNS
- Load balancing across instances
- Northflank proxy
- Service mesh and mTLS
- Network security
- Datastores you know and love
- Queues
- High availability
- Backups & restores
- Fork databases
- Zonal redundancy
- Vertical scaling
- Horizontal scaling
- Autoscaling
- Real-time log tailing
- Real-time metrics
- Log manipulation
- 30 day retention
- Log sinks
- Alerting
- Notifications
- Northflank's managed cloud
- Northflank's regions
- Cloud providers
- AWS
- Azure
- GCP
- CoreWeave
- Oracle
- Civo
- Bring your own Kubernetes
- Cloud credits
- Savings Plans, Commits, and Spot
- Cloud
- Logs
- Metrics
- Support
- To the second billing
- Invoice history
- Pricing
Enterprise
- Projects
- Services
- Jobs
- Addons
- Secret groups
- Pipelines
- Compute
- Custom compute plans
- Continuous integration
- Build with Dockerfiles
- Build with Buildpacks
- Advanced builds
- GitHub, GitLab & Bitbucket integration
- Self-hosted GitLab integration
- Azure DevOps integration
- Continuous deployment
- Continuous delivery
- Deploy container images built on Northflank
- Deploy container images from external registries
- Rollback and select specific builds
- Volumes and persistence
- GPUs
- Secure runtime & sandboxing
- Time-slicing & MIG
- Multi read write volumes
- UI / API / CLI access
- Templates
- GitOps
- Workflows
- Real-time platform
- Platform SDK
- Users
- Fine-grained RBAC
- Organisations
- SAML & OIDC
- Audit logging
- Custom domains
- Automatic TLS & DNS
- Load balancing across instances
- Northflank proxy
- Service mesh and mTLS
- Network security
- Egress IP & Gateway
- Datastores you know and love
- Queues
- High availability
- Backups & restores
- Fork databases
- Zonal redundancy
- Vertical scaling
- Horizontal scaling
- Autoscaling
- Real-time log tailing
- Real-time metrics
- Log manipulation
- 30 day retention
- Log sinks
- Alerting
- Notifications
- Audit logging
- Northflank's managed cloud
- Northflank's regions
- Cloud providers
- AWS
- Azure
- GCP
- CoreWeave
- Oracle
- Civo
- Bring your own Kubernetes
- Cloud credits
- Savings Plans, Commits, and Spot
- Cloud
- Self-deployable control plane
- Logs
- Metrics
- Vault
- DNS
- Registry
- Support
- Dedicated Slack channel
- SLA
- White labelling
- To the second billing
- Invoice history
- Pricing
Heroku vs Northflank FAQ
- Which one is cheaper?
- One or both use custom pricing, so it depends on your specific needs.
- Can I use either one for free?
- Northflank has a free plan. Heroku doesn't — you'll need to pay from day one.
- How do they charge?
- Both use a usage-based model, so the comparison is straightforward — it comes down to features and limits at each price point.
- Which one is a better deal?
- Depends on what you need. Heroku: Premium pricing in the PaaS space - they're 3-4x more expensive than alternatives like Railway or Render for equivalent resources. They're betting on developer experience and ecosystem maturity over cost competitiveness. Northflank: Northflank is threading the needle between Heroku-style simplicity and raw cloud pricing — compute rates are competitive with GCP/AWS but without the complexity tax. They're going after dev teams who want PaaS ergonomics without PaaS markups, positioning against Render and Railway on price transparency.
Still deciding? See the best Heroku alternatives or the best Northflank alternatives, ranked with verified pricing.
Keep tabs on both.
We'll monitor pricing changes for Heroku and Northflank and let you know when something moves.