Heroku alternatives that are actually free in 2026
When Heroku killed its free tier in November 2022, indie hackers scattered. Four years later, the dust has settled and one option gives you more compute than any other for $0/month — but it's not the one most blog posts recommend.
The 2026 ranking
- Cheaploy + Oracle Cloud Always Free — 2 ARM CPUs, 12GB RAM, 10TB egress, real Postgres. $0 forever.
- Fly.io — Generous free allowances, but no longer "free" — usage above 3 shared-cpu-1x VMs is billed. Best for distributed apps.
- Render — Easy UX, but free web services sleep and free Postgres expires after 90 days.
- Railway — $5 free credit/month, ~500 hours of small instance time. Runs out fast.
- Koyeb — One free nano service, sleeps after inactivity.
- Vercel / Netlify — Free for static + serverless under tight limits; not a Heroku replacement for long-running backends.
The honest comparison
| Platform | Free RAM | Sleeps? | Free DB | Free egress |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cheaploy + OCI | 12 GB | No | 2× 20GB Postgres-compatible | 10 TB |
| Fly.io | 3× 256 MB | No | Paid add-on | 160 GB |
| Render | 512 MB | Yes (15 min) | 90-day expiry | 100 GB |
| Railway | ~$5 credit | No | Eats credit | ~100 GB |
| Vercel | Serverless | Cold start | Paid add-on | 100 GB |
Why most blog posts get this wrong
Lists ranking Heroku alternatives usually optimize for "easiest signup" or "best free trial". Indie hackers asking "what replaces Heroku" usually mean: I want a small Node/Python/Go app, a real Postgres, and a $0 bill that stays $0. By that standard, Oracle Cloud Always Free is the only winner — and Cheaploy removes the only real downside (Oracle Console UX) by automating provisioning, capacity retries, and SSL.
What about the Oracle UX horror stories?
The OCI console has 60+ services and a steep learning curve. Cheaploy abstracts every step — region selection, compartment creation, VCN, subnets, security lists, ARM instance launch, cloud-init, load balancer, certificate, DNS — into a single deploy button. You never open the Oracle console after the initial OAuth.
Frequently asked
Why did Heroku kill the free tier?+
Salesforce-owned Heroku cited abuse and cost — free dynos were widely used for crypto miners and bots. The free tier ended November 28, 2022. Existing free dynos were deleted.
Is Oracle Cloud's free tier a trap?+
Oracle's marketing reputation is rough, but the Always Free tier itself is unambiguous: 2 ARM Ampere CPUs, 12GB RAM, 200GB storage, 2 Autonomous Databases, 10TB egress — perpetual, no expiry. The catch is that capacity in popular regions runs out; Cheaploy handles the retry logic.
What about Heroku-style git push deploys?+
Cheaploy supports GitHub integration so every push to main triggers a build and deploy — same UX as git push heroku main, but to your own cloud.
Deploy your project for $0
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