Head-to-head, indicative as of Oct 2026. Prices change — always confirm on the vendor page.
Quick read: pick Neon if your workload is serverless apps needing postgres autoscaling 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.
| Neon | Heroku | |
|---|---|---|
| Type | Serverless Postgres | PaaS (classic) |
| Free tier | Generous free tier | Eco dynos ~$5/mo shared pool |
| Paid pricing (indicative) | Usage-based from ~$0 (scale plans) | Basic dyno ~$7/mo each |
| Egress | Included | Included allowances |
| Cold start | Instant suspend/resume compute | Dyno boot ~seconds |
| Regions | AWS regions | US + EU |
| Best for | Serverless apps needing Postgres autoscaling | No-DevOps deploys for small teams and Shopify-style workflows |
NinjaOps publishes free engineering guides. Some outbound links are affiliate links: they cost you nothing and support the site.
Last reviewed 2026-10-02 · NinjaOps SEO grid · DevOps blog