Heroku vs Pantheon
A detailed comparison to help you choose between Heroku and Pantheon.
Quick Verdict
3.4/5
Heroku
0 reviews
3.6/5
Pantheon
0 reviews
Pantheon is rated higher (3.6 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. Pantheon is a WebOps platform for Drupal and WordPress with Git-based workflows, multi-environment (dev/test/live), autopilot updates, and a global CDN. Used by publishers and agencies.
Heroku The original PaaS — still the easiest deploy | Pantheon WebOps platform for Drupal and WordPress | |
|---|---|---|
| Overview | ||
| Rating | 3.4 (0 reviews) | 3.6 (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 | Agencies and publishers running portfolios of Drupal or WordPress sites where updates, regressions and deployments are the real cost. |
| Specifications (entry plan) | ||
| CPU cores | — | — |
| RAM | 1 GB | — |
| Storage | — | — |
| Bandwidth | — | — |
| SLA uptime | — | 99.95% |
| Data-center count | 12✓ | 4 |
| €/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 | — |
| Tags | ||
| Tags | managed optionus datacentereu datacenterapi access | free tiermanaged optionus datacentereu datacenterteam features |
| Visit Heroku → | Visit Pantheon → | |
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
Pantheon
Pros
- + Workflow is the product: dev/test/live Git deploys, Multidev, Autopilot with visual regression
- + Free sandbox sites and a $0 Silver workspace for small teams
- + Site regions in US, EU, Canada and Australia — EU keeps data and backups in-region
- + Automatic nightly/weekly backups on paid sites, backed by Terminus CLI and API
- + Google Cloud infrastructure with Fastly global CDN included
Cons
- - Workspace fee plus per-site plans gets expensive across a portfolio
- - Uptime SLA (99.95%) only on Elite; Performance tiers sold with no SLA
- - Opinionated CMS-only platform — no root, no arbitrary runtimes
- - Migration lock-in: Multidev, Autopilot and backups tooling must be rebuilt elsewhere
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