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Google Cloud vs Heroku

In this page:

What's good
Price comparison
What services do they offer
Company details
Alternatives to consider

What's good about...

Google Cloud

Extensive range of managed services with a focus on big data and machine learning
BigQuery and Google Kubernetes Engine are widely considered industry-leading solutions
Strong community and developer tooling
40+ data centers around the world

Heroku

As easy as it gets if you just want to deploy a Git repo
Fully-managed infra, minimal ops overhead
Heroku Postgres is a one-click, battle-tested database
Extensive add-on marketplace

Price comparison

How do Google Cloud's prices compare against Heroku?

Example configuration	Google Cloud	Heroku
VM Small	$20.49 / mo 1 vCPU, 1 GB RAM (E2 custom)	$50.00 / mo Dyno 1 GB RAM (Standard 2X)
VM Medium	$90.15 / mo 4 vCPU, 16 GB RAM (E2 custom)	$250.00 / mo Dyno 2.5 GB RAM (Performance M)
VM Large	$179.87 / mo 8 vCPU, 16 GB RAM (E2 custom)	$500.00 / mo Dyno 14 GB RAM (Performance L)
Block Storage	$4.10 / mo 100 GB	--
Object Storage	$24.93 / mo 1 TB	--
Load Balancer	$29.44 / mo	Included in plan
Managed PostgreSQL	$93.60 / mo 2 vCPU, 4 GB RAM, 50 GB storage	$50.00 / mo 4 GB RAM, 64 GB storage
Managed Redis®*	$35.28 / mo 1 vCPU, 1.55 GiB RAM (Basic)	$200.00 / mo 1 GB RAM
Serverless 25M Executions	$47.62 / mo 25M invocations, 2nd gen, 150 ms duration	--
Free egress allowance	Depends on service	2 TB / mo per app
1 TB of egress beyond allowance	$111.60	Not publicly listed

GCP offers GPUs in the following configurations:

Name	GPUs	Total GPU Memory	vCPUs	RAM	Price per hour
g2-standard-4	1x L4	24GB	4	16GB	$0.71
g2-standard-8	1x L4	24GB	8	32GB	$0.85
g2-standard-12	1x L4	24GB	12	48GB	$1.00
g2-standard-16	1x L4	24GB	16	64GB	$1.15
g2-standard-32	1x L4	24GB	32	128GB	$1.73
g2-standard-24	2x L4	48GB	24	96GB	$2.00
a2-highgpu-1g	1x A100	40GB	12	85GB	$3.67
g2-standard-48	4x L4	96GB	48	192GB	$4.00
a2-highgpu-2g	2x A100	80GB	24	170GB	$7.35
g2-standard-96	8x L4	192GB	96	384GB	$8.00
a2-highgpu-4g	4x A100	160GB	48	340GB	$14.69
a2-highgpu-8g	8x A100	320GB	96	680GB	$29.39
a2-megagpu-16g	16x A100	640GB	96	1360GB	$55.74

Note: Our pricing examples are based on several assumptions. Your actual costs may differ. Always check the cloud provider's website for the most up-to-date pricing.

Which services do they offer?

Here are some of the managed services that Google Cloud and Heroku offer:

Service	Google Cloud	Heroku
Block Storage		--
Content Delivery Network (CDN)		--
Container Registry		--
GPU-powered Servers		--
Load Balancer		--
Managed Containers
Managed Kubernetes		--
Managed MySQL		--
Managed PostgreSQL
Managed Redis®*
Object Storage		--
Serverless Cron Jobs		--
Serverless Functions		--
Static Sites		--
Virtual Private Server (VPS)		--

Company details

	Google Cloud	Heroku
Website	cloud.google.com	heroku.com
Headquarters	United States of America 🇺🇸	United States of America 🇺🇸
Founded	2008	2007
Data Center Locations	40	10
Example Customers	PayPal, GitLab, 20th Century Fox, Target, Scotiabank	Airbase, Dovetail, Hotel Engine, ClickMechanic, Ambassify

	Google Cloud
Website	cloud.google.com
Headquarters	United States of America 🇺🇸
Founded	2008
Data Center Locations	40
Example Customers	PayPal, GitLab, 20th Century Fox, Target, Scotiabank

	Heroku
Website	heroku.com
Headquarters	United States of America 🇺🇸
Founded	2007
Data Center Locations	10
Example Customers	Airbase, Dovetail, Hotel Engine, ClickMechanic, Ambassify