Railway offers 50% lower baseline costs ($5/month minimum vs $12/month), better resource efficiency for small projects, and a more modern development experience, while Heroku provides superior enterprise features, wider language support, and a mature ecosystem with 20+ years of platform stability.
Heroku vs Railway — Side-by-side comparison on A Versus B
PaaS platform owned by Salesforce for deploying web apps with minimal DevOps knowledge.
Modern cloud platform offering serverless infrastructure with integrated databases and simplified deployment.
Minimum Monthly Cost. Cold Start Time. Database Included. Free Tier Availability. Supported Languages. Enterprise SLA Uptime. Platform Maturity (Years Active)
Choose Heroku if you need enterprise-grade reliability, advanced add-ons ecosystem (200+ integrations), and compliance certifications for mission-critical applications. Choose Railway if you prioritize affordability, faster cold starts for side projects, and a modern developer experience with included databases and lower operational overhead.
Heroku: Node, Python, Ruby, Java, PHP, Go, Scala, Clojure | Railway: N/A
Heroku: 60+ marketplace add-ons | Railway: N/A
Heroku: Git push, GitHub, Dropbox, API | Railway: N/A
Heroku: No free trial (paid only) | Railway: N/A
Heroku: Discontinued (2022) | Railway: Available with trial
Heroku: Maintenance mode | Railway: Active development
Heroku: Yes (original) | Railway: Yes (modern)
Heroku: $0 (discontinued) | Railway: N/A
Heroku: PostgreSQL, MySQL, Redis (3 types) | Railway: N/A
Heroku: Built-in at all tiers | Railway: N/A
Heroku: 1 minute (add-on) | Railway: N/A
Heroku: No (limited to buildpacks) | Railway: N/A
Heroku: 180+ (official marketplace) | Railway: N/A
Cost for Standard Production App (2 dynos + add-ons)
Heroku: Not native (dyno sleep = 30sec) | Railway: N/A
Heroku: Yes, automatic on git push | Railway: N/A
Heroku: No (discontinued 2022) | Railway: N/A
Heroku: 30-60 seconds | Railway: 2-5 seconds
Heroku: None (discontinued) | Railway: $5/month recurring
Database Provisioning Cost (PostgreSQL Starter)
Cost for Production App (2 dynos/Droplets + DB)
Heroku: 3-5 seconds (free dyno) | Railway: N/A
Heroku: 150+ integrated add-ons | Railway: N/A
Heroku: Limited (configuration over customization) | Railway: N/A
Heroku: Discontinued (was free, now hobby tier $50/month) | Railway: N/A
Heroku: $0.05 (shared dyno equivalent) | Railway: N/A
Heroku: 15+ years (established 2011) | Railway: N/A
Heroku: $0 (discontinued, $7 minimum now) | Railway: N/A
Heroku: N/A | Railway: Regional deployment
Heroku: N/A | Railway: Full Docker/OCI support
Heroku: N/A | Railway: Manual configuration
Heroku: N/A | Railway: Basic security features
Heroku: N/A | Railway: 5+ (PostgreSQL, MySQL, MongoDB, Redis, ElasticSearch)
Heroku: N/A | Railway: 3+ (GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket)
Heroku: N/A | Railway: No (manual snapshots)
Heroku: N/A | Railway: Yes (native runtime)
Supported Languages (via Framework/Docker)
Heroku: N/A | Railway: Unlimited (Docker)
Heroku: N/A | Railway: 5 GB (PostgreSQL)
Heroku: N/A | Railway: Full native support
How to choose between Heroku and Railway
Heroku vs Railway — Structured Comparison Data
Machine-readable comparison dataset for Heroku vs Railway. Contains 97 attribute comparisons, 5 FAQ pairs.
Heroku vs Railway — Attribute Category Vocabulary
Taxonomy of attribute categories used to classify comparison data for Heroku vs Railway.
Which platform is cheaper for a small side project?
Railway is significantly cheaper for small projects. It offers $5/month in recurring credits and includes databases at no extra cost, making your effective starting cost near $0. Heroku's $12/month minimum plus separate database costs ($9+/month) starts at $21+/month total. For projects using minimal resources, Railway can cost 75% less.
No. Heroku discontinued its free tier in November 2022 as part of efforts to eliminate cryptocurrency abuse and reduce infrastructure costs. All applications now require a paid plan starting at $12/month (Eco tier). Railway still offers $5/month in monthly credits, effectively providing a perpetual free tier for light usage.
Which platform is better for production applications?
Heroku is generally better for mission-critical production applications due to its 99.99% uptime SLA (vs Railway's 99.9%), enterprise support options, 200+ certified add-ons for production services (monitoring, logging, security), and 22 years of proven deployment reliability. Railway is production-capable for non-critical workloads with acceptable downtime tolerance.
Why does Railway have faster cold starts than Heroku?
Railway uses modern container orchestration with pre-warmed instances and optimized Docker configurations, achieving 2-5 second startups. Heroku's dynos use older virtualization technology and wake from deep hibernation, resulting in 30-60 second cold starts. This difference matters significantly for projects with infrequent traffic or serverless workloads.
Can I easily migrate from Heroku to Railway?
Yes, migration is relatively straightforward. Both use Procfiles, environment variables, and support PostgreSQL/MySQL. The main steps involve: (1) exporting your database using pg_dump, (2) updating Git remote to Railway, (3) setting environment variables in Railway's dashboard, and (4) redeploying. Most developers complete this in 30 minutes. Heroku provides migration guides, though you'll save ~50% monthly costs by switching.
How to Choose Between Heroku and Railway
Minimum Monthly Cost: Heroku has $12/month, while Railway has $5/month.
Cold Start Time: Heroku has 30-60 seconds, while Railway has 2-5 seconds.
Database Included: Heroku has PostgreSQL (separate cost), while Railway has PostgreSQL, MySQL, MongoDB (included).
Free Tier Availability: Heroku has Discontinued (as of Nov 2022), while Railway has $5 starter credit monthly.
Supported Languages: Heroku has 12+ (Node, Python, Ruby, Java, Go, etc.), while Railway has 15+ (all major languages + Elixir, Clojure).
Enterprise SLA Uptime: Heroku has 99.99%, while Railway has 99.9%.
Consider: Platform Maturity (Years Active)
Platform Maturity (Years Active): Heroku has 22 years (2004-2026), while Railway has 5 years (2021-2026).