Render is the closest Heroku-style pick for most Node.js apps, with a free web service that sleeps after 15 minutes and an always-on Starter service at $7 per month, while Railway is the closest match for a git-push workflow with a database. Heroku is still a real option at $5 per month for an Eco dyno, and in February 2026 it moved to a sustaining engineering model focused on stability, security, and support. The cheapest always-on compute here is Fly.io at $2.19 per 30 days for a 256 MB Machine, but a managed database adds at least $38 per month for Managed Postgres Basic, so the full stack costs far more than compute alone.
Heroku set the pattern for Node.js hosting: push code from Git, get a running web process, add a database, and scale by adding dynos. Some hosts charge a flat monthly price per service, some charge by the second, and some charge per request. Read the database price beside the compute price before you choose, because a $5 app with a $38 database is not a $5 app.
On this page
Alternatives to heroku for node.js: comparison table
Swipe the table sideways on a phone to see every column.
| # | Name | Best for | Starting price | Free plan / trial | Link |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Heroku | Teams that want to stay on Heroku | $5 per month | No | Visit |
| 2 | Railway | Small full-stack Node.js apps with a database | $5 per month | Free trial (30 days) | Visit |
| 3 | Render | Heroku-style deploys with a free tier | $7 per month | Yes | Visit |
| 4 | Fly.io | Low-cost always-on apps in many regions | $2.19 per 30 days | No | Visit |
| 5 | DigitalOcean App Platform | Simple apps that need predictable container prices | $5 per month | No | Visit |
| 6 | Google Cloud Run | Request-driven APIs that scale to zero | $0.40 per 1 million requests | Yes | Visit |
| 7 | Vercel | Frontend-led Node.js apps and serverless APIs | $20 per month | Yes | Visit |
| 8 | Cloudflare Workers | High-volume APIs with no egress charge | $5 per month | Yes | Visit |
The 8 best alternatives to heroku for node.js, in detail
Heroku
Best for: Teams that want to stay on Heroku
Heroku still runs Node.js apps the way it always has. You push code, Heroku detects the Node.js buildpack, and the app runs on a dyno. Eco costs $5 per month for a shared pool of 1,000 dyno hours, Basic costs $7 per month per dyno and stays on, and Standard-1X costs $25 per month per dyno and adds horizontal scaling, preboot, and app metrics.
- Heroku Postgres Essential-0 costs $5 per month for 1 GB.
- One limit: Eco is for personal accounts only, and its dynos sleep after 30 minutes with no web traffic, so the first visit after a quiet period waits
- In February 2026 Heroku moved to a sustaining engineering model focused on stability, security, and support rather than new features, and it stopped o
- Stay if your team already knows its workflow.
Pros
- Git-push deploys with buildpacks
- managed Postgres from $5 per month
- no seat charge, teams share dynos
Cons
- No free dyno since 28 November 2022
- Eco dynos sleep after 30 minutes with no traffic
- Standard-1X costs $25 per month for the same 512 MB
Railway
Best for: Small full-stack Node.js apps with a database
Railway is the closest feel to early Heroku for a Node.js app with a database. You connect a Git repository, Railway detects the runtime, and it runs the service as a long-lived container with a database in the same project. Hobby costs $5 per month and includes $5 of usage credit.
- Pro costs $20 per month per workspace and includes $20 of usage credit, plus 20 custom domains and 30 days of log history.
- The meters matter here.
- Railway charges $10 per GB of RAM per month, $20 per vCPU per month, $0.05 per GB of egress, and $0.15 per GB per month for volume storage, billed by
- The $5 Hobby fee is a usage credit, not a cap.
Pros
- Git-push deploys with Nixpacks or Docker
- managed Postgres and Redis beside the app
- $5 Hobby credit covers small usage
Cons
- Hobby allows only 2 custom domains and 7 days of log history
- usage past the $5 credit bills by the second
- Pro costs $20 per month per workspace
Render
Best for: Heroku-style deploys with a free tier
Render splits the bill into two parts: a workspace plan and compute per service. The Hobby workspace costs $0 per month and includes 5 GB of bandwidth, 500 build minutes, and 2 custom domains. A free web service runs on 512 MB and sleeps after 15 minutes with no inbound traffic, and each workspace gets 750 free instance hours per month.
- The Starter web service costs $7 per month for 512 MB with no sleep, and Standard costs $25 per month for 1 CPU and 2 GB.
- One limit: the free Postgres database is deleted 30 days after creation, with no backups, so it is not for production data.
- The smallest managed Postgres costs $6 per month for 256 MB, so a Starter service with that database is $13 per month.
- Choose Render for Heroku-style deploys, a real free tier, and a flat $25 Pro workspace fee.
Pros
- Free web service with 512 MB
- flat workspace fee with no seat charge on Pro
- managed Postgres from $6 per month
Cons
- Free web services sleep after 15 minutes with no traffic
- free Postgres is deleted after 30 days
- Pro workspace adds $25 per month plus compute
Fly.io
Best for: Low-cost always-on apps in many regions
Fly.io runs a Node.js app as a Firecracker microVM, called a Machine, in 17 regions. The smallest always-on Machine, shared-cpu-1x with 256 MB, costs $2.19 per 30 days in Ashburn, and the same size with 512 MB costs $3.69 per 30 days. Extra RAM costs $6.00 per GB per month, volumes cost $0.15 per GB per month, and egress costs $0.02 per GB in North America and Europe.
- One limit: the low compute price does not include a managed database.
- Managed Postgres Basic costs $38 per month for a shared-2x plan with 1 GB of RAM, high availability, and backups, plus $0.28 per GB of storage.
- A self-managed Postgres container on a Machine costs far less.
- Choose Fly.io for the lowest always-on compute price if you can run a small database yourself.
Pros
- No platform fee, billing by the second
- scale to zero is on by default
- shared IPv4 and unlimited Anycast IPv6 included
Cons
- No free tier for new organizations
- Managed Postgres Basic costs $38 per month
- dedicated IPv4 costs $2 per month
DigitalOcean App Platform
Best for: Simple apps that need predictable container prices
DigitalOcean App Platform deploys a Node.js app from a Git repository or a container image, with no server to manage. A service container with 1 shared vCPU and 512 MiB of RAM costs $5 per month and includes 50 GiB of bandwidth, a 1 GiB container costs $10 per month on the fixed size or $12 per month with scaling, and a 2 GiB container costs $25 per month. Dedicated CPU containers start at $29 per month, and a development database costs $7 per month for 512 MB.
- One limit: the free tier covers up to 3 apps with static site components only, with 1 GiB of outbound data per app, so a Node.js service always starts
- Extra outbound transfer costs $0.02 per GiB, and a dedicated egress IP costs up to $25 per month per app.
- Choose App Platform for a flat container price.
Pros
- Flat price per container with no seat charge
- 50 GiB of bandwidth included at $5
- development database costs $7 per month
Cons
- Free tier covers static sites only, not Node.js services
- fixed $5 container cannot scale past one instance
- dedicated CPU starts at $29 per month
Google Cloud Run
Best for: Request-driven APIs that scale to zero
Cloud Run runs a Node.js container and charges only for the resources it uses, rounded up to the nearest 100 milliseconds. On request-based billing, the free tier gives 180,000 vCPU-seconds, 360,000 GiB-seconds, and 2 million requests free per month, and requests past that cost $0.40 per 1 million. On instance-based billing, CPU costs $0.000018 per vCPU-second and memory costs $0.000002 per GiB-second in us-central1.
- One limit: a Node.js app that holds a connection open, runs a long worker, or keeps a minimum instance warm does not scale to zero in the same way, an
- Cloud Run has no built-in managed database, so add a database to the monthly total.
- Choose Cloud Run for uneven traffic and long idle periods.
Pros
- 2 million requests free per month on request-based billing
- scales to zero when idle
- CPU at $0.000018 per vCPU-second on instance-based billing
Cons
- No fixed monthly price, so a busy app needs a budget alert
- long-running background work fits instance-based billing better
- egress past 1 GiB in North America bills at networking rates
Vercel
Best for: Frontend-led Node.js apps and serverless APIs
Vercel is built for frontend-led apps, with Node.js running as serverless functions behind the site. Hobby costs $0 and includes 100 GB of Fast Data Transfer, 1 million CDN requests, 1 million function invocations, 4 hours of Active CPU, and 360 GB-hours of memory per month. Pro costs $20 per month, includes one deploying seat and $20 of usage credit, and includes the Flat Rate CDN tier with 1 TB of transfer.
- Each extra deploying seat costs $20 per month.
- One limit: Hobby has hard caps and no option to buy extra usage, so when a Hobby limit is hit, that feature usually waits until the 30-day window rese
- The core model is functions that run per request, not a long-lived Node.js server.
- Choose Vercel for a Next.js site or an API beside a frontend, and pick another host if you need a worker that runs all day.
Pros
- Hobby costs $0 for personal, non-commercial projects
- Pro includes 1 TB of Fast Data Transfer on the Flat Rate CDN tier
- 1 million function invocations included on Hobby
Cons
- Hobby is limited to personal, non-commercial use
- each extra deploying seat on Pro costs $20 per month
- long-running Node.js processes are not the main model
Cloudflare Workers
Best for: High-volume APIs with no egress charge
Cloudflare Workers runs JavaScript at the edge, close to the user, rather than on one origin server. The free plan gives 100,000 requests per day, with 10 milliseconds of CPU time per invocation. The Workers plan has a minimum charge of $5 per month for an account, and includes 10 million requests and 30 million CPU milliseconds per month, with extra requests at $0.30 per additional million.
- There is no charge for data transfer or throughput.
- One limit: Workers is not a plain Node.js server.
- Code runs in the Workers runtime, so packages that need Node.js server APIs or long-lived connections may need a different host or a rewrite.
- D1, the built-in SQLite database, gives 5 GB of storage on the Workers plan, with extra storage at $0.75 per GB per month.
Pros
- Free plan gives 100,000 requests per day
- Workers plan includes 10 million requests per month
- no charge for egress or throughput
Cons
- 10 milliseconds of CPU time per invocation on the free plan
- Node.js code must fit the Workers runtime, not every package works
- D1 storage past 5 GB costs $0.75 per GB per month
How we chose
We kept only hosts that run a real Node.js app in production, with a price shown on an official page opened on 2026-11-12. Each host had to offer a clear way to deploy from Git or a container image, a named entry price or meter, and a real limit that forces an upgrade, such as a sleep rule, a seat rule, a CPU cap, or a database price. We did not test any tool hands-on. If a vendor hid the price, we would have written quote only, but every host here lists a price.
Pick by app type and budget
| App type | Pick | Monthly floor from this article |
|---|---|---|
| Side project or demo with a free tier | Render | $0 for a free web service, $7 for always-on Starter |
| Full-stack app with API, worker, and database | Railway | $5 Hobby, plus usage past the $5 credit |
| Lowest always-on compute, database self-managed | Fly.io | $2.19 per 30 days for a 256 MB Machine |
| Request-driven API with quiet hours | Google Cloud Run | $0 inside the 2 million request free tier |
| Frontend-led app with serverless API | Vercel | $0 Hobby for personal use, $20 Pro for commercial use |
| High-volume global API | Cloudflare Workers | $0 free plan, $5 minimum for the Workers plan |
| Staying put on Heroku | Heroku | $5 Eco, $12 with Basic dyno and Essential-0 Postgres |
| Flat container price with no usage meter | DigitalOcean App Platform | $5 per month, plus $7 for a development database |
Frequently asked questions
What is the cheapest Heroku alternative for Node.js?
Fly.io has the lowest always-on compute price here at $2.19 per 30 days for a 256 MB shared-cpu-1x Machine, and Cloud Run can cost $0 inside its free tier of 2 million requests per month. Add the database first, because Fly.io Managed Postgres Basic costs $38 per month.
Which Heroku alternative is best for a small Node.js app with a database?
Railway is the best fit for a small full-stack app, because the API, the worker, and a managed database live in one project, and Hobby costs $5 per month with $5 of usage credit included. Render is the best fit if you want a free tier and a flat price, with a Starter service at $7 per month.
Is Heroku still a good choice for Node.js in 2026?
Heroku is still a good choice if your team already knows its workflow, because git-push deploys, buildpacks, and managed Postgres still work, and Eco starts at $5 per month. It is a weaker choice for a new project that needs a free tier, because free dynos ended on 28 November 2022.
Can I host a Node.js app for free?
Yes, on a free tier with limits. Render gives a free web service with 512 MB that sleeps after 15 minutes, Vercel Hobby gives $0 hosting for personal, non-commercial projects, Cloud Run gives 2 million requests free per month, and Cloudflare Workers gives 100,000 requests free per day. Heroku and Fly.io have no free tier for new accounts.
Which alternative is best for a Node.js API with uneven traffic?
Google Cloud Run is the best fit for uneven traffic, because it scales to zero when idle and charges only for the resources used, with 2 million requests free per month. Cloudflare Workers is the best fit for a high-volume global API, because it includes 10 million requests per month for $5 and charges nothing for egress.
Sources
- https://www.heroku.com/
- https://www.heroku.com/pricing
- https://railway.com/
- https://railway.com/pricing
- https://render.com/
- https://render.com/pricing
- https://fly.io/
- https://fly.io/pricing-update/
- https://www.digitalocean.com/
- https://docs.digitalocean.com/products/app-platform/details/pricing/
- https://cloud.google.com/run
- https://cloud.google.com/run/pricing
- https://vercel.com/
- https://vercel.com/pricing
- https://workers.cloudflare.com/
Prices and features were read on each company’s own website in November 2026. They change often, so confirm the current offer on the official site before you sign up or buy.