Head-to-head, indicative as of Oct 2026. Prices change — always confirm on the vendor page.
Quick read: pick Heroku if your workload is no-devops deploys for small teams and shopify-style workflows and its included egress fits your traffic shape; pick Alibaba Cloud if you need reaching apac users at apac prices. For anything latency-sensitive at the edge, cold start row is the tiebreaker.
| Heroku | Alibaba Cloud | |
|---|---|---|
| Type | PaaS (classic) | Full cloud (ECS) |
| Free tier | Eco dynos ~$5/mo shared pool | Trial credits |
| Paid pricing (indicative) | Basic dyno ~$7/mo each | ECS from ~$2.50/mo promo |
| Egress | Included allowances | Metered by region |
| Cold start | Dyno boot ~seconds | N/A |
| Regions | US + EU | Strong APAC + global |
| Best for | No-DevOps deploys for small teams and Shopify-style workflows | Reaching APAC users at APAC prices |
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Last reviewed 2026-10-02 · NinjaOps SEO grid · DevOps blog