Heroku Replacements 2026: Render vs Fly vs Railway vs Koyeb
After Heroku killed its free tier, four hosts split the inheritance. Here is which one to pick by use case.
Heroku ended its free dyno in November 2022. Three years later, the dust has settled and four hosts have split the indie-dev inheritance. None of them is a clean replacement , Heroku's "git push, your app is live" experience cost real money to provide. But each one solves a piece.
Render: closest to old Heroku, with one painful caveat
Render's pitch is "Heroku, redone." Free static sites, free web services on a 0.1 CPU / 512 MB box, native Postgres and Redis. The dashboard layout maps almost 1:1 to Heroku's.
The painful caveat: free web services spin down after 15 minutes of inactivity. The next request waits 30 seconds for your container to wake up. For an indie SaaS where the first impression matters, this is a deal breaker. For internal tools that nobody hits between 9 PM and 9 AM, it is fine.
The free Postgres also expires at 90 days, which makes Render unfit for any project you intend to keep alive without paying.
Fly.io: containers near the user, no real free tier anymore
Fly.io was the indie favorite from 2021 to 2024 because of generous free resources and a global edge. In October 2024 they ended the truly free tier and switched to a $5 monthly credit model. The credit covers a 256 MB shared-CPU machine running 24/7 plus light bandwidth , but you need a credit card and you are no longer technically on a free tier.
Fly's strength is the regional placement. Your container can run in 35+ cities close to your users, which most other hosts cannot match. If geography matters and you do not mind a card on file, Fly remains the technically best fit for global containers.
Railway: the polished one, $5 minimum after trial
Railway is what Heroku looked like in 2018, redone with a 2025 dashboard. Templates for every common stack, one-click Postgres, native Redis, generous resources per dollar. The catch is there is no truly free plan , after the $5 trial credit you pay at least $5 a month on Hobby.
Pick Railway when polish and templates matter more than absolute zero cost. The DX is genuinely the best in this category.
Koyeb: the always-on free tier (and EU jurisdiction)
Koyeb's free tier includes one always-on web service with no spin-down , the only host in this list that fixes Render's biggest weakness on the free plan. They are based in Paris, which matters for projects with GDPR or EU data residency requirements.
The free instance is 0.1 vCPU / 256 MB, which is genuinely slow for build-heavy apps but fine for a small API or scheduled job. Postgres and Redis are native.
Verdict
Building an internal tool that can sleep? Render free. Need global container placement? Fly.io. Want polish and templates and don't mind paying $5? Railway. Need an always-on free tier or EU jurisdiction? Koyeb. The Heroku experience is gone, but you can rebuild 90 percent of it on one of these four for $0-5 a month.