Heroku vs Railway
Heroku and Railway cannot be scored on the same axes — one of them does not publish a rate for everything application platforms bills on.
List prices checked
Rate cards side by side
Only the axes at least one of them bills on. A dash means that provider does not charge for it.
| Billing axis | Heroku | Railway | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Entry plan | $5.00/mo | $5.00/mo | Same |
| Data transfer out | — | $0.050/GB | — |
| Free tier | Yes | Yes | — |
Source: Heroku pricing (May 2026) · Railway pricing (May 2026). Published list prices only — committed-use discounts, regional variation, and per-request charges are not included. Not yet independently re-checked against the vendor’s page.
Monthly cost for three real workloads
The rate cards applied to identical usage. This is where the winner changes.
| Workload | Heroku | Railway | Cheaper |
|---|---|---|---|
| Side projectA personal site or small app with modest traffic, a few gigabytes of assets, and one small always-on process. | — | $10 | Not comparable |
| Growing SaaSA funded product serving a few thousand daily users, with an image-heavy frontend and two application servers. | — | $55 | Not comparable |
| Media-heavy siteA publisher or video product where delivery dominates the bill and compute is almost an afterthought. | — | $505 | Not comparable |
Workload definitions are identical on every comparison page, so figures here can be read against any other pair in the same category.
What each one is for
Heroku
by Heroku
The platform that defined the category, now priced well above alternatives that offer the same workflow. Chosen today mostly for inertia and add-on ecosystem rather than for economics.
Free tier: None; the free dyno tier ended in November 2022
Railway
by Railway
Bills per second of actual CPU and memory consumption rather than per provisioned instance, which makes irregular and low-traffic workloads markedly cheaper than flat-rate platforms.
Free tier: $5 of usage included on the Hobby plan
Common questions
- Is Heroku or Railway cheaper in 2026?
- Neither can be scored across all three workloads, because at least one of them does not publish a rate for every axis this category bills on.
- Which has the better free tier, Heroku or Railway?
- Both publish one. Heroku: None; the free dyno tier ended in November 2022. Railway: $5 of usage included on the Hobby plan.
- What do these estimates not include?
- Committed-use and reserved discounts, regional price variation, per-request API charges, support plans, and minimum retention periods. All of those move real invoices, sometimes by a lot. These figures compare published list prices for the same workload, which is the comparison the rate cards alone cannot give you.