Heroku logo Runpod logo

Heroku vs Runpod

Jump to: What's good Pricing GPUs Services Company details Alternatives

What's good about...

Heroku logo Heroku

  • Fully-managed infra, minimal ops overhead
  • Heroku Postgres is a one-click, battle-tested database
  • Extensive add-on marketplace

Runpod logo Runpod

  • Deploy affordable GPUs in under a minute
  • Scale across 30+ regions worldwide
  • SOC 2 Type II certified, 99.9% uptime SLA
  • Flexible billing: pay by the second, no commitments
  • Multi-node Clusters scale to thousands of GPUs
  • Built-in deployments, autoscaling & monitoring

Price comparison

How do Heroku's prices compare against Runpod?

VM Small

Heroku Heroku
$50.00 /mo Dyno 1 GB RAM (Standard 2X)
Runpod Runpod
$43.20 /mo 2 vCPU, 4 GB RAM (Compute-Optimized)

VM Medium

Heroku Heroku
$250.00 /mo Dyno 2.5 GB RAM (Performance M)
Runpod Runpod
$86.40 /mo 4 vCPU, 8 GB RAM (Compute-Optimized)

VM Large

Heroku Heroku
$500.00 /mo Dyno 14 GB RAM (Performance L)
Runpod Runpod
$172.80 /mo 8 vCPU, 16 GB RAM (Compute-Optimized)

Block Storage

Heroku Heroku
--
Runpod Runpod
$10.00 /mo 100 GB

Load Balancer

Heroku Heroku
Included in plan
Runpod Runpod
--

Managed PostgreSQL

Heroku Heroku
$50.00 /mo 4 GB RAM, 64 GB storage
Runpod Runpod
--

Managed Redis®*

Heroku Heroku
$200.00 /mo 1 GB RAM
Runpod Runpod
--

Free egress allowance

Heroku Heroku
2 TB / mo per app
Runpod Runpod
Free and unlimited

1 TB of egress beyond allowance

Heroku Heroku
Not publicly listed Bandwidth is soft limited per app (2 TB / mo)
Runpod Runpod
Free and unlimited

GPU Fleet Overview

Billing Options

Heroku Heroku
--
Runpod Runpod
On-DemandReservation

Available Models

Runpod offers 35 GPU models.

Heroku Heroku
--
Runpod Runpod
H100(10) RTX PRO 6000(4) H200(5) A100(12) L40S(5) B200(3) B300(4) RTX A6000(3) RTX 5090(4) V100(2)
View all 35 GPUs →

Heads up: A provider's own page may quote a different figure, for example on tax, region or a promotion. A monthly-only plan shows a derived hourly rate. Plan figures take each provider's closest match to a common setup. Verify before provisioning. More on how we price.

Which services do they offer

Here are some managed services that Heroku and Runpod offer:

Service Heroku Runpod
Block Storage
GPU-powered Servers
Managed Containers
Managed PostgreSQL
Managed Redis®*
Performance Monitoring
Python Notebooks
Virtual Private Server (VPS)

Company details

Website
Heroku Heroku
heroku.com
Runpod Runpod
www.runpod.io
Headquarters
Heroku Heroku
United States of America US flag
Runpod Runpod
United States of America US flag
Founded
Heroku Heroku
2007
Runpod Runpod
2022
Data Center Locations
Heroku Heroku
10
Runpod Runpod
32
Example Customers
Heroku Heroku
Airbase, Dovetail, Hotel Engine, ClickMechanic, Ambassify
Runpod Runpod
Zillow, CivitAI, Wix, OpenAI, Perplexity, Cursor

Alternatives to consider

Compare Heroku and Runpod against other cloud providers.

View all comparisons

Our data for Heroku was last updated on Feb. 12, 2026, and for Runpod on Sept. 11, 2026.