Compare / Heroku
The Heroku alternative that kept the good parts
Salesforce moved Heroku to a sustaining engineering model on 6 February 2026: stability, security, and support, but no new features. Lizard keeps what made Heroku good — git push to deploy, a worker that is just another process, a database one command away — and bills by the second on measured use instead of by the dyno size.
Why developers look for a Heroku alternative
No new features, by announcement
Heroku’s own post says the platform is transitioning to sustaining engineering and that Enterprise Account contracts are no longer offered to new customers. Existing apps are unaffected.
Dyno sizes jump in big steps
Standard-1X is $25 a month for 512 MB; Standard-2X is $50 for 1 GB. A web dyno, a worker, and Essential-1 Postgres is $59 a month for 1 GB of total memory.
You pay for the size, not the use
A dyno costs the same asleep as it does under load. Lizard bills only for active resources, on measured CPU, memory, and disk.
The add-on marketplace is a middleman
Postgres, Redis, and storage are first-party on Lizard, in the same project as the app that reads them.
Lizard vs Heroku
Every figure read off Heroku’s published pricing and our own. Last verified: August 2026.
| Compared by | Lizard | Heroku |
|---|---|---|
| Unit of deployment | A service — any size, no fixed tiers | A dyno, in fixed sizes |
| Worker processes | A service with no HTTP port, same deploy | A worker dyno, billed like a web dyno |
| Billing | Per second on measured CPU, memory and disk | Per second on the dyno size you chose |
| Small production app | About $19 a month for web, worker, and Postgres | $59 a month for Standard-1X × 2 plus Essential-1 |
| Postgres | PostgreSQL 18, one command, billed on measured use | Essential-0 $5, Essential-1 $9, Essential-2 $20, Standard-0 from $50 |
| Procfile | Read and honoured by lizardpack | The native format |
| Shell into a running app | lizard ssh | heroku run bash, in a one-off dyno |
| Roadmap | Active | Sustaining engineering since 6 February 2026 — no new features |
When Heroku is the better choice
You already run there, it works, and nothing is being switched off. Heroku is supported, patched, and priced exactly as before, the add-on marketplace still has integrations nobody else offers, and Heroku Postgres remains a genuinely good managed database. Migrating a working app on principle is not a good use of a week.
Moving from Heroku
No Dockerfile required — lizardpack detects the stack and writes one on the build node. If your repo already has a Dockerfile, it is used as it stands.
Frequently asked questions
No. On 6 February 2026 Salesforce moved Heroku to a sustaining engineering model — stability, security, reliability, and support, without new features — and stopped offering Enterprise Account contracts to new customers. Existing apps keep running and pricing has not changed.
Lizard and Railway are the closest in shape: both bill by the second on measured use rather than by dyno size, both run a worker exactly like a web service, and both provision Postgres and Redis from the same place as the app. Render is the closest on ergonomics if you prefer flat, predictable tiers.
Yes. lizardpack reads the web: line from a Procfile and uses it as the start command, so a repo that deployed to Heroku deploys to Lizard unchanged.
Dump from the DATABASE_URL Heroku gives you with pg_dump, run lizard add postgres, and restore into the connection string it prints with pg_restore. Plan a short write freeze and check that your extensions exist on both sides.
A web process, a worker, and a small Postgres — $59 a month on Heroku at Standard-1X — comes to roughly $19 a month on Lizard at a realistic 25% average CPU and 50% average memory, because the bill follows measured use rather than the tier you picked.
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