Table of Contents
What Heroku charges, from its pages
From heroku.com/pricing and the Dev Center's dyno specifications and Postgres plan pages in September 2026 (Cedar-generation dynos in the Common Runtime):
| Plan | Memory | Monthly | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Eco | 0.5 GB | $5 flat for a 1,000-hour pool across all Eco dynos | Personal accounts only; sleeps after 30 minutes of inactivity |
| Basic | 0.5 GB | $7 per dyno | Always on |
| Standard-1X | 0.5 GB | $25 | Shared CPU (1x) |
| Standard-2X | 1 GB | $50 | Shared CPU (2x) |
| Performance-M | 2.5 GB | $250 | Dedicated |
| Performance-L | 14 GB | $500 | Dedicated |
| Postgres Essential-0 | 1 GB storage | $5 | Up to 4 hours downtime a month per tier description |
| Postgres Essential-1 | 10 GB storage | $9 | Same tier |
| Postgres Essential-2 | 32 GB storage | $20 | Same tier |
The Dev Center's note on Eco: "Eco dynos require a $5 flat fee monthly subscription that covers a pool of 1000 hours shared by all Eco dynos in an account", and the pricing page lists Eco as "Personal accounts only" with "Sleeps after 30 minutes of inactivity"; Basic is listed as "Always on". Every tier's feature list includes "Deploy with Git and Docker", "Automatic OS patching" and "Automated certificate management". Billing, from the usage and billing page: "Heroku prorates all costs to the second." The Fir generation, Private Spaces and Shield dynos are priced higher on the same pages and are outside a small-app comparison.
What a VPS charges for the same memory
The smallest Heroku dyno is half a gigabyte; the smallest common VPS size is 2 GB. From the providers' pages and APIs as verified on this site:
| Provider | 2 GB plan | Monthly | Billing | US locations |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| InterServer | 1 core, 2 GB, 40 GB, 2 TB | $3 | Monthly | NYC, Dallas, LA |
| OVHcloud | 2 vCPU, 4 GB, 40 GB, unmetered | $5.35 | Monthly or 12-month | Virginia, Oregon |
| BuyVM | 1 core, 2 GB, 40 GB, unmetered | $7 | Monthly | New York, Las Vegas |
| Hostwinds | 1 vCPU, 2 GB, 50 GB, 2 TB | $9.99 | Monthly | Dallas, Seattle |
| Vultr | 1 vCPU, 2 GB, 55 GB, 2 TB | $10 | Hourly | Nine regions |
| DigitalOcean | 1 vCPU, 2 GiB, 50 GiB, 2,000 GiB | $12 | Per second | NYC, SFO (all families); three Premium-CPU metros |
| Linode | 1 vCPU, 2 GB, 50 GB, 2 TB | $12 | Hourly | Ten regions |
A small app, priced both ways
| Heroku | VPS (Vultr, 2 GB) | VPS (InterServer, 2 GB) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Web process | Basic dyno, 0.5 GB, $7 | Runs on the server | Runs on the server |
| Database | Postgres Essential-0, 1 GB, $5 | PostgreSQL on the server | PostgreSQL on the server |
| Memory available | 0.5 GB app + managed DB | 2 GB shared by both | 2 GB shared by both |
| Deploys | git push | Your script, or Dokku/Coolify | Your script, or Dokku/Coolify |
| TLS, OS patches, backups | Included | Yours (certbot, unattended-upgrades, a backup job) | Yours |
| Monthly | $12 | $10 | $3 |
| Same app needing 1 GB | Standard-2X $50 + Essential-0 $5 = $55 | $10 | $3 |
At the entry size the bills are close and Heroku's includes the work; at 1 GB the gap opens to five times, and at 2.5 GB (Performance-M, $250) to twenty-five. That curve is why teams leave: Heroku's price scales with the dyno ladder, a VPS's with commodity memory. The curve says nothing about which is cheaper for a given team, because the VPS column omits the hours; the next section lists what those hours are.
What the VPS does not include
- Deploys. Heroku builds from a git push using buildpacks or a Dockerfile. On a VPS you write the deploy (rsync, a systemd unit, a container pull) or install a tool that does.
- Runtime and OS. "Automatic OS patching" is on every Heroku tier; on a VPS, unattended-upgrades and your own reboots.
- Certificates. "Automated certificate management" on Heroku; certbot or Caddy on a VPS.
- Database. Heroku Postgres plans include backups and, above the Essential tier, tighter downtime targets (the plans page describes Essential as for apps that can tolerate up to 4 hours of downtime a month). On a VPS, PostgreSQL is installed, tuned, backed up and restored by you.
- Logs, metrics, restarts, scaling. Heroku's log drains, dyno restarts and one-command scaling are replaced by journald, a process manager and a bigger plan.
- Add-ons. Heroku's marketplace services (queues, caches, monitoring) become things you install or subscribe to separately.
The hardening guide covers the first hour of that list and the migration guide the move itself.
Putting the deploy step back: Dokku, CapRover, Coolify
Three open-source projects reproduce Heroku's deploy model on a server you rent. Dokku describes itself as "An open source PAAS alternative to Heroku", "Powered by Docker"; CapRover as "Scalable, free, and self-hosted PaaS" with "One-click apps" and "Automatic HTTPS"; Coolify as "An open-source & self-hostable alternative to Vercel, Heroku, Netlify and Railway". All three are free to run and are documented on their own sites; this page names them without ranking or testing them. Two practical notes: each needs memory of its own, so a 2 GB server running the tool, an app and PostgreSQL is tight and 4 GB (OVHcloud $5.35, InterServer $6) is more comfortable; and none of them takes the operations off you, only the deploy.
Regions and cities
Heroku's regions page lists the Common Runtime as "us" (United States) and "eu" (Europe), chosen at app creation, and Private Spaces with named locations including Virginia and Oregon in the US. A VPS is bought in a city: the providers in the table above sell in New York, Dallas, Los Angeles, Chicago, Atlanta, Seattle, Miami and more, and the low-latency page lists who is where. For an app with users in one metro that is a real difference; for most, it is not the deciding one.
When Heroku is the right buy
When the bill is small and the operations it removes are large relative to the team. A solo developer with a $12 app and no interest in servers is paying $9 a month over InterServer for OS patching, certificates, database backups and deploys; that is a good trade. A prototype, a hackathon project, an internal tool, or an app that leans on specific Heroku add-ons are the same case. The trade turns when the dyno ladder makes memory expensive (Standard-2X at $50 for 1 GB), when the app needs a city, root access or hardware Heroku does not sell, or when the team already runs servers and the operations are marginal. At that point a VPS with Dokku or Coolify gives back most of the workflow at commodity prices, and the Azure alternatives and Google Cloud vs DigitalOcean pages cover the managed-platform options between the two.
What this page could not verify
- Heroku Fir-generation dyno prices, Private Space and Shield prices, and Postgres Standard-tier and above: on the same pages, not reproduced here.
- Heroku add-on prices and any free or trial credit: not read for this page.
- Dokku, CapRover and Coolify resource requirements and feature parity: from their own documentation, not tested here.
- Any performance figure: none.
Affiliate link: BestUSAVPS may earn a commission if you buy from InterServer through it. It is placed here as the lowest 2 GB monthly price on this site; Heroku and the other providers are plain links.