Heroku vs Railway

Choose Heroku when the add-on catalog and buildpacks are what you are buying. Choose Railway when you want a shorter path from a repo to a service and you do not need that add-on marketplace.

Heroku

Mature app platform with a large add-on catalog

Paid dynos

Strengths

Add-ons cover databases, cache, and logging
Buildpacks still cover common stacks

Limits

Dynos cost more than a comparable VPS
There is no permanent free dyno

Vendor pricing Alternatives

Railway

Deploy a small service from a repo with little setup

Usage-based

Strengths

Fast path from a repo to a running service
Databases and apps live in one project

Limits

Usage billing can jump when a service stays busy
Less control than a VPS

Vendor pricing Alternatives