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 Northflank if you need teams shipping many small services and databases. For anything latency-sensitive at the edge, cold start row is the tiebreaker.
| Heroku | Northflank | |
|---|---|---|
| Type | PaaS (classic) | Deployment platform (containers + DBs) |
| Free tier | Eco dynos ~$5/mo shared pool | Free tier with 2 services |
| Paid pricing (indicative) | Basic dyno ~$7/mo each | Usage-based from ~$0 |
| Egress | Included allowances | Included |
| Cold start | Dyno boot ~seconds | N/A (persistent) |
| Regions | US + EU | Multi-region |
| Best for | No-DevOps deploys for small teams and Shopify-style workflows | Teams shipping many small services and databases |
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Last reviewed 2026-10-02 · NinjaOps SEO grid · DevOps blog