Head-to-head, indicative as of Oct 2026. Prices change — always confirm on the vendor page.
Quick read: pick Fly.io if your workload is apps that need to be close to users everywhere and its included egress fits your traffic shape; pick Heroku if you need no-devops deploys for small teams and shopify-style workflows. For anything latency-sensitive at the edge, cold start row is the tiebreaker.
| Fly.io | Heroku | |
|---|---|---|
| Type | Global VM platform | PaaS (classic) |
| Free tier | Small allowances on paid plan | Eco dynos ~$5/mo shared pool |
| Paid pricing (indicative) | Pay-as-you-go from ~$2/mo per VM | Basic dyno ~$7/mo each |
| Egress | Free tier then billed | Included allowances |
| Cold start | ~300ms (Firecracker VMs) | Dyno boot ~seconds |
| Regions | 30+ regions | US + EU |
| Best for | Apps that need to be close to users everywhere | No-DevOps deploys for small teams and Shopify-style workflows |
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Last reviewed 2026-10-02 · NinjaOps SEO grid · DevOps blog