Heroku vs Railway Pricing (2026)
How do these two stack up on price? Here's what each one costs, what you get, and where the value sits.
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
Free
- Start with a 30-day free trial with $5 credits, then $1 per month
- Up to 1 vCPU / 0.5 GB RAM per service
- 0.5 GB of volume storage
- Community support
Hobby
- Includes $5 of monthly usage credits
- After credits are used, you'll only be charged for extra resource usage
- Up to 48 vCPU / 48 GB RAM per service
- Up to 5 replicas, at 8 vCPU / 8 GB RAM per replica
- Up to 5 GB storage
- Single developer workspace
- Community support
- 99.9% Availability Target
- 7-Day Log History
- Global regions
Pro
Popular- Includes $20 of monthly usage credits
- After credits are used, you'll only be charged for extra resource usage
- Up to 1,000 vCPU / 1 TB RAM per service
- Up to 42 replicas, at 24 vCPU / 24 GB RAM per replica
- Up to 1 TB storage
- Unlimited workspace seats included
- Railway Support
- 99.99% Availability Target
- 30-Day Log History
- Concurrent global regions
Enterprise
- 90-Day Log History
- Single Sign-On
- 18-Month Audit Log Retention
- Role-Based Access Control
- HIPAA BAAs
- Support SLOs
- 99.999% Availability Target
- Highest compute limits
- Dedicated VMs
- Bring your own cloud
- Up to 2,400 vCPU / 2,4 TB RAM per service
- Up to 50 replicas, at 48 vCPU / 48 GB RAM per service
Heroku vs Railway FAQ
- Which one is cheaper?
- They both start at the same price — $5/mo. The difference is in what you get at each tier.
- Can I use either one for free?
- Railway 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. Railway: Railway sits below Heroku and Render on entry price but competes directly with Fly.io and Render on the 'simple cloud for developers' positioning. The per-second billing and low base fees make it attractive for bursty or low-traffic workloads where you'd overpay on flat-rate platforms.
Still deciding? See the best Heroku alternatives or the best Railway alternatives, ranked with verified pricing.
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We'll monitor pricing changes for Heroku and Railway and let you know when something moves.