Tell HN: Heroku alternatives with generous free tiers
Here are the three that I know of that are equivalent to what Heroku used to offer([1],[2]):
- https://fly.io/pricing (requires credit card)
- https://northflank.com/pricing
- https://www.koyeb.com/pricing
Runners up:
- https://render.com/pricing (sleeps after 15 minutes, 30s spin-up)
- https://qoddi.com/#pricing (no custom domains)
- https://railway.app/pricing (only runs 500hrs/month, but doesn't require credit card)
- https://appliku.com/#pricing (only Django, no custom domains)
Note: Fly.io is the only one of these I have actually used. I like it so far. I plan to migrate my Heroku apps to Fly. Edit: just tried their automatic migration tool ( https://fly.io/launch/heroku ) and it works like a charm!
[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32594533
[2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32595589
55 comments
[ 2.3 ms ] story [ 103 ms ] thread[1] https://www.koyeb.com/pricing
https://github.com/ripienaar/free-for-dev#paas
https://platform.sh/pricing/
https://www.digitalocean.com/products/app-platform
Disclaimer: I work at DO.
As I think a lot of people will point out: Heroku's DX is better than ours in a bunch of ways. Their superpower is DX, and our superpower is scaling apps out across the globe (our secondary superpower is running clusters of services). We're working hard on simplifying our Docker-based DX (our schtick is that we convert Docker/OCI images into VMs) --- we have a `flyctl launch` command that will automatically generate containers from standard framework repositories --- but Heroku has us solidly beat on that stuff.
Also, we're proudly CLI-first. If you're allergic to CLIs, we're not your best bet. We love our CLI very, very much.
I could say lots of nice things about us, but so can every hosting provider; the useful things to know are where you might be tripped up by us vs. Heroku. Also, I think Heroku is a pretty incredible accomplishment, and they've had 15+ years to work on it, so I wince at the idea that we're doing everything they do --- seems unlikely!
>we have a `flyctl launch` command that will automatically generate containers from standard framework repositories --- but Heroku has us solidly beat on that stuff.
I honestly think the fact that all it takes is a dockerfile for fly.io will help you shoot past heroku soon enough. I never understood how to make a buildpack, but many more people know how to write a dockerfile
I would love to see support for docker-compose to define clusters. I know you are getting a lot of these "I would love to see" messages lately. Good problem to have.
I started learning to code as a teenager, with cash being my only way of spending money, so all services that either had a price or required CC verification were completely unavailable for me. Not being able to afford them wasn't the problem, not being able to pay was.
I really enjoyed Heroku for that reason, it was the only service that allowed me to put apps up on the internet that I could actually get access to. It's really sad that something like that is going away.
It won't make you feel much better, but this issue is very close to the top of our stack (we'd also convert visitors and window-shoppers better if they could boot something up without a credit card). The incentives are there for us to fix this; it's mostly a matter of time.
I'm glad you called it out.
I wonder, because Github actions are a thing, Github is likely to be facing the same issue, and is likely to have implemented mitigations already. Maybe you could piggyback on that effort and require Github auth?
Github actions wears the cost as a huge multinational and has anti-abuse mechanisms in place for CI runners but not account signups which again are simple to automate if it means free compute.
None of these things are actual solutions, people abuse free tiers to run cryptominers and commit crime, they don't get dissuaded by that. A CC number is a much more serious threshold that solves nearly all of your problems in a day.
https://aws.amazon.com/free/?all-free-tier.sort-by=item.addi...
I'd also say that in the year of our lord 2022 literally everyone has heard about unexpected cloud bills (yes, happens with GCP and Azure all the time as well) and hence should know that they have to set their account up properly - there is a ton of tutorials by AWS and others on how to set up your budgets and billing alerts.
> Technical Product Management @ AWS
Thank you for your reply. However, I must respectfully disagree. Even in your hypothetical startup example, we should default to do not charge people until they flip a switch saying they are in production. I know it doesn't matter to you right now because AWS has so much demand but I think in terms of developer experience (DX), it would be really nice if we could rely on some kind of a sandbox. Even Microsoft Azure has Visual Studio subscription, which has a cap. Please consider adding this option.
https://vercel.com/pricing/
Similar to what other HN commenters mentioned on this and other threads. Offering unrestricted compute online tends to be hard to manage from an abuse perspective.
Aside from that: just here to answer any questions about the product/roadmap. We want your workloads to be successful, on Railway or anywhere else. :)
Amirite?
Heroku was much simpler and this is what their quality was from the start. It isn't just that there was a free tier, it was, when you have to pay, there was a limit and you could understand, I am paying $15 for instance, $7 for database, $5 for redis (I don't remember prices), sum is $27/mo, so you know roughly how much it would cost you.
Who wants to bring down their app just so they can connect to their database to make changes?
But probably the number one reason why I like them is because of how snappy everything is. Frankly puts AWS/GCP/Azure to shame.
https://www.alwaysdata.com/en/