Salesforce-owned PaaS that killed its free tier and raised prices sharply
What Heroku costs, how it compares to similar DevOps, Monitoring & Observability tools on price positioning, and every documented billing complaint that's shaped its reputation.
Heroku is a platform-as-a-service for deploying and running applications, owned by Salesforce. Heroku eliminated its free dyno and free Postgres tiers in November 2022, and paid dyno/add-on pricing has risen since.
Heroku's ease of use made it the default choice for a generation of developers, but the elimination of its free tier in 2022 and subsequent price increases have driven a steady migration to Render, Railway, and Fly.io. Reliability and roadmap investment are also frequently questioned post-acquisition.
Pricing details are drawn from our editorial research and may change — always confirm current rates on www.heroku.com before buying.
This isn't a feature-by-feature price comparison — it's a positioning check against other DevOps, Monitoring & Observability tools we track, based on documented complaint volume and risk profile.
| Product | Risk Score | Billing complaints | Positioning note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Heroku (this product) | 48 · Caution | 1 | — |
| Hubstaff | 21 · Mixed Signals | See pricing → | Lower overall risk profile — worth a look if pricing transparency matters to you Full comparison → |
| Grafana Cloud | 22 · Mixed Signals | See pricing → | Lower overall risk profile — worth a look if pricing transparency matters to you Full comparison → |
| Tableau | 22 · Mixed Signals | See pricing → | Lower overall risk profile — worth a look if pricing transparency matters to you Full comparison → |
Heroku removed its free tier entirely in November 2022, forcing every hobby project and small app onto paid dynos, which many small developers and students described as a breaking point.
Our AI scanner searches Reddit, Trustpilot, BBB, and news sources for fresh complaints from the past year, paraphrases what it finds, and adds anything new to this page. Takes up to 90 seconds.
Every billing, hidden-fee, and pricing-related complaint we've recorded for Heroku — with sources.
Heroku removed its free tier entirely in November 2022, forcing every hobby project and small app onto paid dynos, which many small developers and students described as a breaking point.
We don't scrape live pricing pages — this page reflects documented pricing details from our editorial research and dated billing complaints from public sources. For current rates, always check the vendor's own pricing page.