HerokuvsRender

Platform48

Platform62

Score Comparison

Overall

Pricing

Usability

Performance

Support

Reliability

Onboarding

Security

Integrations

HerokuRender

Signals Comparison

Pricing

Heroku

Free tier eliminated in November 2022(10/10)
Costs escalate quickly with scale(9/10)
Billing continues after account deletion(8/10)
Eco dynos sleep after 30 minutes(6/10)
Limited payment options - credit card only(4/10)

Render

Pricing changes with short notice(8/10)
Charged for failed deployments(6/10)
Credit card declines without explanation(7/10)

Reliability

Heroku

June 10, 2025 outage - 15+ hours of downtime(10/10)
Entering sustaining engineering mode - no new features(9/10)
Multiple major outages in June 2025(9/10)
Status page ran on affected infrastructure(8/10)

Render

Free Postgres databases expire after 30 days(9/10)
Account suspensions without warning(9/10)
Recurring outages and slow deployments(8/10)
Postgres connection timeouts(6/10)

Support

Heroku

Customer support described as 'comically bad'(8/10)

Render

Support response times far exceed advertised(7/10)

Customization

Heroku

Limited infrastructure control - vendor lock-in(8/10)

Render

Static IP only on higher plans(6/10)
Limited language and framework support(5/10)

Usability

Heroku

GitHub deployment errors and log tracking issues(6/10)

Render

UI tricky for newcomers(4/10)

Performance

Heroku

No signals

Render

Free tier services sleep after 15 minutes(8/10)

Pricing Comparison

Heroku

Eco Dynos

$5/mo

Users: N/A

Storage: N/A

Limits: Sleeping dynos, not suitable for production, no custom domains on some plans

Dynos sleep after 30 min inactivity (10-30s wake time), hours shared across ALL apps

Basic Dynos

Popular

$7/mo

Users: N/A

Storage: N/A

Limits: No memory scaling, no autoscaling, basic monitoring only

Database separate (Mini Postgres $5/mo), add-ons extra, each dyno billed separately

Standard-1X

$25/mo

Users: N/A

Storage: N/A

Limits: Still single-tenant, no dedicated resources

Standard-2X is $50/mo, databases charged separately, add-ons accumulate

Performance-M

$250/mo

Users: N/A

Storage: N/A

Limits: Still limited compared to raw cloud VMs at similar prices

Performance-L is $500/mo, Shield (compliance) adds more, enterprise pricing opaque

Render

Free

Users: 1 user

Storage: 1GB Postgres, ephemeral Key Value

Limits: Services spin down after 15 min, ~1 minute cold start, No team features, Community support only

Postgres expires after 30 days, Services sleep after 15 min inactivity, Key Value data lost on restart

Individual

Popular

$7/mo

Users: 1 user

Storage: Usage-based

Limits: Email support only, No team collaboration features

Each service costs separately ($7+ each), Bandwidth overages, Database costs additional

Team

$19/mo

Users: Per user

Storage: Usage-based

Limits: Support response times may still be slow, No dedicated account manager

$19 per additional team member plus compute costs, Total cost = team seats + all service costs

Organization

$29/mo

Users: Per user

Storage: Usage-based

Limits: High cost for larger teams, Still usage-based compute billing

$29 per user plus all compute costs, Enterprise features require this tier

Feature Comparison

Feature	Heroku	Render
Deployment
Git Push Deployment Heroku pioneered this
Git auto-deploy
Container Support Docker support
Databases
Managed Postgres Mini $5/mo
Managed Redis $3/mo start
Managed PostgreSQL
Security
Free SSL certificates Automatic
DDoS protection Built-in
Integrations
Add-on Marketplace Extensive options
Performance
Global CDN
CI/CD
Review Apps
Scaling
Autoscaling Standard+ only
Pricing
Free Tier Removed Nov 2022
Networking
Custom domains 2 on free tier
Static outbound IP Higher plans only
Platform
New Features Development Sustaining mode Feb 2026
Features
WebSocket support Limited support
Serverless functions Not fully supported
Availability
Always-On ($5) Eco dynos sleep