Open-source alternatives to Heroku
6 self-hostable open-source projects that replace Heroku, ranked by computed health score with real self-hosting cost. Save up to $34/yr per seat by self-hosting on a $4.13/mo VPS.
Why people leave Heroku
- Free tier killed in 2022, entry now $5/mo per dyno
- Postgres add-on starts at $9/mo on top of dyno cost
- Memory limits trigger forced upgrades fast
- Pricing per resource adds up vs flat VPS cost
Coolify, Dokploy, and CapRover give Heroku-style git-deploy + buildpack experience on a $5 Hetzner box.
The 6 alternatives, ranked by health
Health score is a 6-dimension composite. See methodology for formula and weights.
A self-hosted, ad-free, privacy-respecting metasearch engine
Lightweight library for web server applications in Swift on macOS and Linux powered by coroutines.
A fast directory-first photo gallery website, with rich UI, optimized for running on low resource servers (especially on raspberry pi)
Mocker + Proxy Application
A simple OCR API server, seriously easy to be deployed by Docker, on Heroku as well
An archiving tool with an IM-style interface that prioritizes privacy and accessibility, integrated with various archival services including Internet Archive, archive.today, Ghostarchive, IPFS, Telegraph, and file systems.
Cost comparison vs Heroku
Self-hosting cost on cheapest plan meeting requirements vs Heroku entry tier ($7/mo).
| Project | Self-host /mo | Heroku /mo | Save /yr | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| whoogle-search | $4.13 | $7+ | $34 | Deploy → |
| Zewo | $4.13 | $7+ | $34 | Deploy → |
| pigallery2 | $4.13 | $7+ | $34 | Deploy → |
| moxy | $4.13 | $7+ | $34 | Deploy → |
| ocrserver | $4.13 | $7+ | $34 | Deploy → |
| wayback | $4.13 | $7+ | $34 | Deploy → |
Pick your alternative
Most operators land on whoogle-search (top health score in this category; cheapest VPS path is whoogle-search on hetzner for $4.13/mo).
Data refreshed daily. Pricing for Heroku sourced from official site.