Heroku Pricing 2026: What You’ll Actually Pay
Heroku has no free tier, and the dyno is only half the bill — every database and cache is a paid add-on. See real monthly costs for four app profiles and a flat alternative.
That is the short answer. The longer answer — and the reason "Heroku is expensive" is such a common refrain — is that the dyno is only half the bill. Every database, cache and queue is a separate paid add-on, the free tier is gone, and the cheap Eco dynos sleep when idle. Below we break down every charge, compute the real monthly cost for four app profiles from Heroku’s published rates, walk through two worked examples, and cover the flat-price alternative if a predictable all-in bill matters more to you than a mature add-on marketplace.
How does Heroku pricing work in 2026?
The dyno types, from Heroku’s pricing (heroku.com/pricing):
- Eco — $5/month for 1,000 pooled dyno-hours shared across all Eco dynos. Sleeps after 30 minutes idle.
- Basic — $7/month per dyno (~$0.01/hour). Does not sleep.
- Standard-1X — $25/month (512 MB), Standard-2X — $50/month (1 GB).
- Performance-M — $250/month (2.5 GB), Performance-L — $500/month (14 GB).
The dyno is the part people quote. The add-ons — Postgres, Redis, and the rest — are the part that doubles the bill, because each is priced separately on top.
What will you actually pay? Cost by app profile
We estimated these from Heroku’s published rates (dynos $5–$500, Postgres $5–$200, plus Redis) for always-on services.
| App profile | What it runs | Est. Heroku / month | shiply.now (flat) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Side project / small API | Basic dyno + Postgres Mini | ~$12 | $8 |
| Full-stack app + Postgres | Standard-1X + Postgres Standard-0 | ~$75 | $8–$24 |
| Busy SaaS | Multiple dynos + Postgres + Redis | ~$360+ | $24 |
| Scale a dyno horizontally | each extra dyno | +$25–$50 | included |
Worked example: a full-stack app with a database
Take the second row — a small production full-stack app on Heroku: a Standard-1X web dyno, a Heroku Postgres database, and a Redis cache:
- Standard-1X web dyno = $25
- Heroku Postgres Standard-0 = $50
- Heroku Key-Value Store (Redis) Mini = $3
That is roughly $78 a month for one modest full-stack app — and the database alone costs twice the dyno. The same app on shiply.now is a flat $8–$24 with the database included.
Worked example: a busy SaaS
Scale that up — two web dynos, a worker dyno, a larger database and a bigger cache:
- 2 × Standard-2X web dynos = $100
- 1 × Standard-2X worker dyno = $50
- Heroku Postgres Standard-2 = $200
- Redis (Premium-0) = $15
That is about $365 a month — and it grows every time you scale a dyno or upgrade the database. On a flat plan, neither moves it.
The hidden costs that inflate a Heroku bill
In order of how often they catch people out:
- Add-ons cost more than the dyno. A $25 dyno with a $50 Postgres and a $15 Redis is a $90 bill where the compute is the smallest line.
- No free tier. Since November 2022 the minimum to run anything is $5 (Eco), and Eco dynos sleep after 30 minutes — fine for demos, not production.
- Horizontal scaling multiplies dynos. Two web dynos for redundancy is two dyno charges, not one.
- Data tiers jump fast. Postgres goes $5 → $9 → $50 → $200 between tiers, so outgrowing one is a step change, not a nudge.
None are hidden in Heroku’s docs. They are just easy to leave out when you quote yourself the $7 dyno price.
Heroku vs Railway vs Render: which pricing model fits?
The practical read: Heroku suits teams that value its mature add-on marketplace and one-click services and will pay a premium for them; Railway suits spiky, variable workloads; Render suits steady always-on instances. None offer a single flat number covering compute, database and cache — which is the gap shiply.now fills. We break the others down in the Railway pricing guide and the Render pricing guide.
How to estimate your Heroku bill before you deploy
A quick sanity-check: a real production app is at least one non-sleeping dyno ($7–$25) plus a real Postgres tier ($9–$50), so ~$30–$75 before traffic. If that number makes you wince, a flat plan with the database included is worth a look.
When Heroku is the right call
None of this makes Heroku a bad product — it is one of the original and most polished platforms. It makes it an add-on-priced one, where the dyno is a base and every managed service stacks on top. Knowing how many dynos and add-ons you will run is the whole decision.
Is Heroku worth it? A quick verdict
Put simply: Heroku sells you simplicity and bills you per dyno and per add-on for it. That is the right trade for some teams and the wrong one for others. If you find yourself pricing Postgres tiers and counting dynos to keep costs down, that effort is the real price — and a flat plan with the backend included removes it.
The flat-price alternative: shiply.now
It is also built for agents: your AI tool publishes in one HTTP call, with no account needed to start and no build step to wait on. If you are weighing platform pricing more broadly, the same logic runs through the flat vs metered pricing guide and our flat pricing.
How to move from Heroku to shiply in four steps
- Export your app from Heroku — the built output, plus your Postgres schema and a data dump.
- Create a free account on shiply.now and pick a flat tier.
- Publish in one call from your agent or the CLI — you get a live URL, a database, and a custom domain, with the backend included.
- Point your domain at the new site and retire the Heroku dynos and add-ons. The bill is now flat.