Heroku has long been the go-to cloud Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) for scalable app deployment and management. It saves developers the bother of setting up servers and supporting infrastructure by offering a subscription-based cloud-based managed environment.

Despite its popularity, Heroku just announced that it will discontinue all free services, forcing users to upgrade to premium subscriptions. Beginning November 28, the Salesforce-owned cloud platform as a service will discontinue free product plans and shut down free data services, and it will soon (on October 26) begin removing dormant accounts and related storage for accounts that have been idle for more than a year.

This may no longer be an ideal option for students and hosting hobby projects, therefore be prepared with other good alternatives to Heroku.

Various PaaS companies have attempted to compete with Heroku, and some have succeeded. In this article, we'll take a look at some alternatives which are a close match to the former.

Railway

Railway is an infrastructure platform that allows you to provision infrastructure, develop with it locally, and then deploy it to the cloud. 1GB Disk, 512 MB RAM, $5 limit, or 500 hours of free usage per month.

Link: railway.app

Fly.io

Fly is a platform for globally distributed applications. It executes your code close to users and scales computation in cities where your programme is most popular. Write your code, package it as a Docker image, deploy it to Fly's platform, and let it do the rest to keep your app running smoothly. Free for side projects, $10 per month in service credit that applies to any paid service. Credits will also go a long way if you run very small virtual machines.

Link: fly.io

Deno Deploy

Globally distributed system that runs JavaScript, TypeScript, and WebAssembly at the edge. The free tier includes 100,000 daily requests and 100 GiB of data transmission each month.

Link: deno.com/deploy

Koyeb

Koyeb is a developer-friendly serverless platform for worldwide app deployment. With git-based deployment, native autoscaling, a global edge network, and built-in service mesh and discovery, you can host Docker containers, web apps, and APIs with ease. With its forever-free tier, Koyeb offers two nano services to operate your apps and also sponsors open-source projects with free resources.

Link: koyeb.com

Napkin

Instantly create and deploy serverless cloud operations from the browser. Easily add API authentication, schedule tasks, and replay events. A FaaS with 1Gb of memory, a default timeout of 15 seconds and 1,000,000 free API calls/month.

Link: napkin.io

Deta

Get your Python and Node.js apps and APIs online in seconds. Unlike Heroku, which lets you to operate up to two free dynos, Deta allows you to construct an unlimited number of micros. The size of your application's source code and dependencies, however, cannot exceed 250MB. Deta is forever free.

Link: deta.sh

Meteor Cloud

Galaxy hosting. Meteor's platform-as-a-service for Meteor apps, with free MongoDB Shared Hosting and automated SSL. Build, monitor and host your application on the only platform designed with your Meteor app in mind.

Link: meteor.com

Conclusion

That's all folks 👨‍🏫, Thank you for making it this far down. All the resources mentioned are not just the only resources available, I'm sure there must be tons of other amazing project out there too. These are the ones that I really found helpful and often get myself indulged into. 👨🏻‍💻 Peace out ✌🏼