Heroku vs Coolify
A detailed comparison to help you choose between Heroku and Coolify.
Quick Verdict
3.4/5
Heroku
0 reviews
4.2/5
Coolify
0 reviews
Coolify is rated higher (4.2 vs 3.4). Heroku pioneered platform-as-a-service in 2007. Owned by Salesforce. Supports 10+ languages, huge addon marketplace (150+ addons). Removed free tier in 2022 but remains popular for ease of use. Eco plans restart. Coolify is a free, open source self-hosted platform for deploying apps, databases, and services on your own servers. Supports any Docker image, one-click databases, and automated SSL.
Heroku The original PaaS — still the easiest deploy | Coolify Self-hosted open source Heroku/Netlify alternative | |
|---|---|---|
| Overview | ||
| Rating | 3.4 (0 reviews) | 4.2 (0 reviews)✓ |
| Pricing model | paid | freemium |
| Starting price | From $5/mo | Free tier available✓ |
| Best for | Time-poor developers and small teams who want git-push deploys, a huge add-on ecosystem and zero server operations, and who accept premium per-unit pricing for it | Solo developers and small teams with Linux skills who want Heroku-style deploys on their own cheap servers without per-app PaaS pricing |
| Specifications (entry plan) | ||
| CPU cores | — | — |
| RAM | 1 GB | — |
| Storage | — | — |
| Bandwidth | — | — |
| SLA uptime | — | — |
| Data-center count | 12 | — |
| €/GB RAM/mo | €5.00 | — |
| Features | ||
| IPv6 | ||
| DDoS protection | ||
| Automated backups | ||
| Snapshots | ||
| Managed option | ||
| Bare metal | ||
| GPU available | ||
| S3-compatible | ||
| Hourly billing | ||
| Free tier | ✓ | |
| Data-center locations | ||
| Regions | useuDublinFrankfurtLondonMontreal+6 | Bring your own servers; Cloud control plane on Hetzner in Falkenstein, Germany |
| Tags | ||
| Tags | managed optionus datacentereu datacenterapi access | free tieropen sourceself hostable |
| Visit Heroku → | Visit Coolify → | |
Heroku
Pros
- + Still the smoothest deploy workflow in the market — git push and done
- + Large add-on marketplace and mature language buildpack support
- + Transparent dyno pricing with clear tiers from $5 to $1,500/month
- + Automated OS patching, free SSL, unified logs and instant scaling
- + Private Spaces and Shield options for network isolation and compliance
Cons
- - Poor price-performance versus raw VPS compute
- - No free tier since 2022; Eco dynos sleep and meter hours
- - 2026 engineering pivot to stability — new features and new Enterprise contracts paused
- - 2022 security breach remains part of the track record
- - Only two Common Runtime regions, and region choice does not guarantee data residency
Coolify
Pros
- + Self-hosted is free forever with the complete feature set — unlimited servers, deployments and team members, Apache 2.0, no feature paywall
- + Coolify Cloud is $5/month including 2 connected servers ($3/month per extra server) — a flat fee that takes no margin on your compute
- + Deploys apps, databases and 280+ one-click services with automatic Let's Encrypt TLS and git push workflows on any SSH-reachable Linux host
- + Open codebase with a large, active community (20k+ Discord members) and near-daily development
Cons
- - You own server security, patching, firewalling and workload backups — the platform only removes deployment tedium
- - No uptime SLA, no enterprise support tier, SSO or compliance package; support is community plus limited email on Cloud
- - Fast-moving project: frequent releases and occasional upgrade friction, with a busy issue tracker
- - Cloud base plan covers only 2 servers and each team needs its own subscription
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