---
title: "Heroku pricing in 2026: how much does your app cost?"
url: https://while.sh/en/comparisons/heroku-pricing/
author: "Grégoire Mougeolle, co-founder of Nextmap"
updated: 2026-11-02
---

# Heroku pricing in 2026, explained, and the same app on while

Heroku bills each dyno and each add-on at a monthly price, counted by the second, with no free plan. Here's how to read its price list, what three typical apps cost, and the same app on while.

## How Heroku bills

- **Each dyno has a price.** Basic costs $7 per month and doesn't sleep, Standard-1X costs $25, Standard-2X $50 (source 1).
- **You pay for the time it's on, not the work done.** A running dyno is billed by the second, whether it receives traffic or not (source 4).
- **The database has its own tiers.** Essential-0 costs $5 per month, without point-in-time recovery. You need Standard-0, at $50, to go back 4 days (sources 3 and 1).
- **There's no free plan.** Eco, at $5 per month (source 1) for 1,000 hours, sleeps after 30 minutes and is limited to personal accounts (source 5).

## Heroku's plans

| Plan | Price | What's included |
|---|---|---|
| Eco | $5 per month | 1,000 dyno hours, personal account (source 5) |
| Basic | $7 per dyno per month | 0.5 GB, always on (source 1) |
| Standard-1X and 2X | $25 and $50 per dyno | Zero-downtime deployments, alerts (source 1) |
| Performance | $250 and up per dyno | Dedicated CPU (source 1) |

## The database, storage and traffic

| Item | At Heroku |
|---|---|
| Heroku Postgres | Essential from $5 to $20, Standard from $50, Premium from $200 (source 1) |
| Point-in-time recovery | None on Essential, 4 days on Standard, 7 on Premium (source 3) |
| Key-Value Store | From $3 per month (source 1) |
| Spending cap | None: resources are billed as long as they run (source 4) |

## Three typical apps, per month

| App | At Heroku | On while |
|---|---|---|
| A small always-on API (0.25 vCPU, 0.5 GB) and its database | $12, about €10.70, without point-in-time recovery. $57, about €50.82, with it | At most €13.75, point-in-time recovery included |
| The same API with 1 vCPU and 2 GB, and its database | $255, about €227.35, with the first dyno above 2 GB | At most €39.25 |
| An app asleep most of the time, with its database | $10, about €8.92, on Eco with Essential-0 | About €5.96, for the database and 60 hours of activity |

Calculated on November 2, 2026 from the public price list (source 1), excl. VAT, in euros at the November 2 exchange rate (source 6). The sleeping app is active 60 hours per month. On while, a lightly loaded app costs less than these maximums.

## What you pay on while

On while, you pay for what an app uses: €17 per vCPU and €8.50 per GiB of memory, per month, counted by the second. An S database costs €5 per month, and its disk €0.25 per GiB, backups included: one per day, with point-in-time recovery, and for a production database, a test restore every day proves it starts again. Each project has its budget: a change that would exceed it waits for your approval, an alert goes out at 80% and at 100%, and a live app is never cut off. Your AI agent, Claude Code or Cursor for example, deploys on its own, and everything runs in France.

## Which one to choose

- **Choose Heroku** if your apps run well there, you don't need to roll your database back, and France doesn't matter.
- **Choose while** if you want point-in-time recovery from the smallest database up, to pay for what you use in euros, in France, and for your AI agent to deploy without breaking anything.

## Next steps

- [Leave Heroku without rewriting your app](/en/guides/migrate-from-heroku/)
- [Compare Heroku and while](/en/comparisons/while-vs-heroku/)
- [while pricing](/en/pricing/)

## Sources

1. [Heroku, the pricing page](https://www.heroku.com/pricing), 2026-11-02
2. [Heroku, dyno types](https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/dyno-sizes), 2026-11-02
3. [Heroku Postgres, plans](https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/heroku-postgres-plans), 2026-11-02
4. [Heroku, usage and billing](https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/usage-and-billing), 2026-11-02
5. [Heroku, Eco dyno hours](https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/eco-dyno-hours), 2026-11-02
6. [European Central Bank, the euro exchange rate on November 2, 2026 (€1 = $1.1216)](https://www.ecb.europa.eu/stats/policy_and_exchange_rates/euro_reference_exchange_rates/html/eurofxref-graph-usd.en.html), 2026-11-02

## Questions

### Is Heroku free?

No: the free plan no longer exists, and Eco costs $5 per month (source 1). On while, the Free plan costs nothing: you only pay for resources.

### How much does Heroku Postgres cost?

$5 per month for Essential-0, without point-in-time recovery, and $50 for Standard-0, which goes back 4 days (sources 1 and 3). On while, an S database costs €5 per month, plus €0.25 per GiB of disk, point-in-time recovery included.

### Can I leave Heroku without rewriting my app?

Yes: your agent takes over the code, copies the database and carries over your variables.