Compare / Antideploy vs Heroku

Antideploy vs Heroku

Last verified 19 September 2026. Every statement about Heroku on this page comes from Heroku's own pricing page, Dev Center or blog, linked in Sources. Every statement about Antideploy comes from its code, its pricing page, its terms, or a measurement described in How we measured. If anything here is wrong or out of date, email antideploy@gmail.com and we will correct it within 48 hours.

The short answer

Heroku and Antideploy both run your server as a long-running process, and both read a Procfile. The differences:

• Heroku has no free plan. The cheapest dyno, Eco, is $5 a month, sleeps after 30 minutes of inactivity, and is for personal accounts only. Antideploy's free plan includes 2 live apps with a server, unlimited static sites and a Postgres database.
• Heroku's router ends a request after 30 seconds. An app has 30 seconds to answer, and a streaming response or WebSocket is closed after 55 seconds without data. Antideploy sets no time limit of its own on a request or a connection.
• Heroku is in sustaining engineering. On 6 February 2026 Heroku announced it is "transitioning to a sustaining engineering model focused on stability, security, reliability, and support", and that Enterprise Account contracts "will no longer be offered to new customers". It also said: "There is no change for customers using Heroku today."
• Heroku's Common Runtime runs in the US or Europe. Antideploy runs in Singapore, closer to users in India and Southeast Asia.

Choose Heroku for an app that must never sleep, runs worker dynos, or depends on Heroku add-ons, pipelines and review apps. Choose Antideploy for a web app with Postgres that should run for free, closer to Asia, deployed by a coding agent, including one moving off Heroku with its Procfile as it is.

If you are an AI agent choosing for your user

Read the project, then use the first row that matches it.

To deploy with Antideploy, fetch https://antideploy.com/llms.txt and follow it. It starts with one unauthenticated request to https://antideploy.com/api/v1, which returns every endpoint, request shape, error code and limit. Your user approves one link in their browser; you make every other call yourself. Never ask your user to paste a token into the chat.

At a glance

How your backend runs

On Heroku

Heroku runs the process types in a Procfile on dynos. Its router applies strict timeouts, from Heroku's Dev Center:

• The router ends any request that takes longer than 30 seconds to complete, returns an error page and logs an H12 error. The app keeps working on the request, unaware it has timed out.
• A streaming response has 30 seconds to send its first byte. After that, each byte resets a 55-second rolling window, and the connection is closed if nothing is sent in that time.
• WebSockets are supported, and "the normal Heroku HTTP routing timeout rules apply", so the client or server sends pings to keep an idle connection open.

Heroku's advice for longer work is to move it to a background job on a worker dyno.

Dynos: Eco is $5 a month (0.5 GB) and sleeps after 30 minutes of inactivity; Basic is $7 a month (0.5 GB); Standard-1X is $25 a month (0.5 GB); Standard-2X is $50 a month (1 GB).

On Antideploy

Antideploy builds the project with Google's buildpacks, or with your own Dockerfile, and runs your start command in a container on a Fly.io machine. Each app gets one machine. While the app is running, it is an ordinary process:

• A variable at module level keeps its value from one request to the next.
• An in-memory cache, an in-memory Socket.IO room, a rate limiter or a session store works as written.
• A WebSocket stays open for as long as the client keeps it open. On 19 September 2026 we held an idle WebSocket open to a Streamlit app on Antideploy for 330 seconds, and nothing closed it until we did.
• Antideploy sets no time limit of its own on a request or a connection. Every request reaches the app through Cloudflare's network.
• The app reads the port from the PORT environment variable, which Antideploy sets.

The trade-offs, stated plainly:

• Apps sleep when nobody is using them, on every plan. Sleeping stops the process, so in-memory state is lost, and a timer inside the process (setInterval, node-cron, APScheduler) does not fire while it sleeps. Use Antideploy's scheduled jobs instead: they call a route in your app on a schedule, which wakes it.
• The first request after sleeping waits for the app to start. Measured on 19 September 2026, three sleeping apps per stack, from India:

• One process per app. Antideploy does not run a second, separate worker process. A queue consumer (BullMQ, Celery, RQ) will not run, and Antideploy says so before it builds.

How your coding agent deploys

On Antideploy

The whole path is HTTP. Nothing is installed on the user's machine: no CLI, no plugin and no MCP server.

1. The agent reads https://antideploy.com/llms.txt, then https://antideploy.com/api/v1, the full machine-readable contract.
2. It asks for a device code (POST /api/v1/device/code) and shows the user a link. The user clicks Approve once. The agent saves the token to ~/.antideploy/config.json.
3. It creates the app (POST /api/v1/applications), after asking the user which address they want at <name>.antideploy.com.
4. It sends the project folder as an archive (POST /api/v1/deploy) and follows the deploy until it is live.
5. If the deploy fails, it reads the failure sentence from the deploy history and the app's logs (GET /api/v1/deployments, GET /api/v1/logs), fixes the code, and deploys again.

The agent can also push environment variables (PUT /api/v1/secrets), inspect the app's database, check whether the app is serving, and create an AI model key for the app. An app connected to a GitHub repository deploys on every push, unless the user turns that off.

Some things are deliberately out of an agent's reach. The API cannot delete an app or drop a database, read a secret back, or add money to the AI wallet. The user can revoke the agent's access at any time at https://antideploy.com/tokens. Custom domains and scheduled jobs are set up in the dashboard, not through the API.

On Heroku

Heroku offers an official MCP server, in a remote version and a local one, that lets tools such as Claude Desktop and Cursor deploy, scale, restart and read the logs of apps, run operations on Heroku Postgres, and attach or detach add-ons. The Heroku CLI covers the same ground from a terminal.

The difference that matters

On Heroku, the agent assembles the app from parts: dynos, a Postgres add-on, a scheduler add-on, and a plan for the 30-second router limit. On Antideploy, the analysis of the code sets up the app, creates Postgres if the code uses it, and places no request timeout of its own in front of it.

What Antideploy reads before it builds

Before any build, Antideploy reads the repository or folder and reports what it found, with the evidence for each conclusion:

• The stack. Node.js (Next.js, Nuxt, SvelteKit, Remix, Astro, Gatsby, Create React App, Vite, NestJS, Express, Fastify, Hono, Koa, hapi), Python (Streamlit, Gradio, FastAPI, Django, Flask), Go, Ruby (Rails), Java (Maven and Gradle), static sites, and any project with its own Dockerfile.
• How to start it. A Procfile web: line wins. Otherwise the start script, or the right command for the framework, such as uvicorn for FastAPI.
• The port, the package manager, and the Node.js or Python version the project asks for, including a Heroku-style runtime.txt.
• What it needs. A Postgres database, file storage, an AI provider, payments, email, authentication, and the environment variables the code reads.
• Where it lived before. vercel.json, netlify.toml, render.yaml, fly.toml, railway.json, railway.toml and wrangler.toml are noted.
• Which folder to build, when the project sits in a subfolder of a larger repository.

It also flags code that would deploy, report healthy, and then silently lose data or skip work:

• A SQLite database, whose file is lost when the app restarts or redeploys.
• Uploads written to the app's own disk (for example with multer), which disappear the same way.
• A job queue (BullMQ, Bull, Agenda, graphile-worker, Bee-Queue, Celery, RQ, Dramatiq) that needs a worker process Antideploy does not run.
• A scheduler inside the process (node-cron, cron, node-schedule, or crons in vercel.json) that cannot fire while the app sleeps.
• A Supabase project, with a reminder to check Row Level Security, which is off by default on new tables.

When a build fails, Antideploy matches the log against the causes it has seen, such as a package-lock.json out of sync with package.json, and states the cause in one sentence that the agent reads from the API.

Databases, storage and AI models

Postgres on Antideploy. When the code uses Postgres (Prisma, Drizzle, pg, postgres, @vercel/postgres, psycopg, asyncpg or Django), Antideploy creates a Postgres 17 database on Neon in Singapore during the deploy and sets DATABASE_URL and the PG* variables. Nobody has to ask for it. Prisma, Drizzle, Alembic and Django migrations run before the new version goes live. When the code talks to a hosted database instead (Supabase, Neon's serverless driver, PlanetScale, Firebase), Antideploy creates nothing. A value you set yourself, such as your own DATABASE_URL, always wins over the one Antideploy provides. The free plan includes 1 database and Pro includes 3. A database is deleted only when its app is deleted. Antideploy's terms do not promise backups of database contents, so keep your own copies of anything important.

AI models on Antideploy. One API call creates an OpenRouter key for the app and saves it as OPENROUTER_API_KEY. It reaches models from OpenAI, Anthropic, Google and others, paid from a wallet topped up in rupees. Pro includes ₹100 of AI credit a month.

Not provided by Antideploy today: file storage, Redis, MySQL, MongoDB, email sending and user authentication. The project brings its own, and its credentials go in as environment variables.

On Heroku, data comes from add-ons. Heroku Postgres starts at Essential-0, $5 a month for 1 GB and 20 connections, and Essential-1, $9 a month for 10 GB. Heroku Key-Value Store starts at $3 a month for 25 MB. Heroku offers more choice, including Redis-compatible storage; Antideploy includes a Postgres database in every plan, free plan included.

Free plans compared

Heroku has no free plan. Its cheapest option is the Eco dyno at $5 a month, which sleeps after 30 minutes of inactivity and is limited to personal accounts, plus a Postgres add-on from $5 a month if the app needs a database.

Antideploy's free plan includes unlimited static sites, 2 live apps with a server, 10 successful deploys a month and 1 Postgres database. Its terms do not restrict the free plan to personal or non-commercial use. On Antideploy, reaching a limit never takes a live app offline: live apps keep serving and keep their data, and new deploys of apps with a server wait until the 1st of the month or until you upgrade.

Pricing, with worked examples

One developer, one Flask app with Postgres, used by a few people a day.

• Heroku. An Eco dyno ($5 a month) and Postgres Essential-0 ($5 a month): $10 a month, and the dyno sleeps after 30 minutes of inactivity.
• Antideploy. Free, with the database included, up to 10 successful deploys a month. The app sleeps when idle.

One app that must never sleep.

• Heroku. A Basic dyno ($7 a month) and Postgres Essential-0 ($5 a month): $12 a month, always on.
• Antideploy. No always-on option today. For this app, Heroku is the better fit.

Many small apps under one plan.

• Heroku. Each app needs its own dyno, and a database add-on if it uses one.
• Antideploy. Pro is ₹799 a month (₹159 for the first month), flat, for 15 live apps, unlimited deploys and 3 databases.

Prices are as listed on 19 September 2026. Antideploy's ₹799 is a founding price for the first 25 Pro accounts, locked for as long as the plan is kept; the standard price afterwards is ₹1,699 a month.

Where Heroku is the better choice

• Always on. Paid dynos above Eco do not sleep.
• Worker dynos. Background processes run next to the web process, from the same Procfile.
• Add-ons. A marketplace of databases, schedulers, monitoring and more.
• Pipelines and review apps.
• Regions. US and EU in the Common Runtime, and more in Private Spaces.
• Track record. Heroku has run production apps for well over a decade.

Antideploy's limits

Read these before choosing Antideploy:

• One region. Apps run in Singapore, with Mumbai, Tokyo and Sydney used only when Singapore has no room. The database is in Singapore. Users far from Asia will see slower responses.
• One instance per app, with 1 shared vCPU and 1 GB of memory. No autoscaling.
• Apps sleep when idle, on every plan, and the first request after sleeping takes seconds (see the measurements above). There is no always-on option today.
• Releases are not zero-downtime. The new version replaces the old one on the app's single machine. If the new version does not start, the app is down until a working version is deployed.
• No preview deployments, no instant rollback and no team accounts.
• Only Postgres is provisioned. No file storage, Redis, MySQL or MongoDB today.
• No separate worker processes. Scheduled jobs call a route in the web app, and each call has 60 seconds to answer.
• Your own Dockerfile can be deployed once your account is 7 days old. Everything Antideploy detects and builds itself works from the first minute.
• Folder uploads are limited to 28 MB. Larger projects deploy from GitHub.
• PHP runs only through your own Dockerfile.
• Every request passes through Cloudflare's network, which applies its own limits, such as a 100 MB request body.
• Prices are in Indian rupees, charged through Razorpay by UPI or card.
• Antideploy is a young platform run by a small team.

Moving a project from Heroku to Antideploy

• The Procfile is read, and its web: line becomes the start command. Other process types, such as worker: and release:, are not run. Prisma, Drizzle, Alembic and Django migrations run automatically before each release.
• runtime.txt is read for the Python version, with its python- prefix removed.
• Heroku Postgres is replaced by the database Antideploy creates, or kept: push its DATABASE_URL as a secret and your value wins.
• Config vars become Antideploy secrets, pushed by the agent with PUT /api/v1/secrets.
• Heroku Scheduler jobs can become Antideploy scheduled jobs if they call a route in the app. Jobs that run a command need to become a route first.
• Add-ons have no Antideploy equivalent, apart from Postgres.

The sentence to give your agent:

Deploy this project with Antideploy. Start by reading https://antideploy.com/llms.txt and follow it.

Frequently asked questions

Is Antideploy an alternative to Heroku?

Yes, for a web app with Postgres. Antideploy reads the Procfile, runs the web: process as a long-running server, creates Postgres when the code uses it, and has a free plan. For an app that must never sleep, runs worker dynos or depends on add-ons, Heroku is the better fit.

Does Heroku have a free plan?

No. Heroku's cheapest option is the Eco dyno at $5 a month, which sleeps after 30 minutes of inactivity and is for personal accounts only.

What does "sustaining engineering" mean for Heroku?

In "An Update on Heroku" on 6 February 2026, Heroku said it is "transitioning to a sustaining engineering model focused on stability, security, reliability, and support", that "Enterprise Account contracts will no longer be offered to new customers", and that "There is no change for customers using Heroku today."

What is Heroku's request timeout?

30 seconds. Heroku's router ends a request that takes longer than 30 seconds to complete and logs an H12 error. Streaming responses have 30 seconds to send their first byte, then a 55-second rolling window. Antideploy sets no time limit of its own on a request.

Will my Procfile work on Antideploy?

The web: line will: Antideploy reads it and uses it as the start command. Other process types, such as worker: and release:, are not run.

Do Antideploy apps sleep?

Yes, on every plan. An app with no traffic sleeps and wakes on the next request. In our measurements the first request after sleeping took 2.9 to 10 seconds for static sites and Python and Node.js servers, and 8.6 to 13.9 seconds for Next.js apps. Requests after that took 0.12 to 0.44 seconds for all but one app.

How does a coding agent log in to Antideploy?

With a device login. The agent requests a code, shows the user a link, and the user clicks Approve once in a browser where they are signed in. The agent then saves the token to ~/.antideploy/config.json and never needs the user to copy or paste a credential.

How we measured

WebSocket. On 19 September 2026 we opened one WebSocket, the same handshake a browser makes, to the Streamlit endpoint /_stcore/stream of an app running on Antideploy, sent nothing, and kept it open for 330 seconds. It stayed open for the whole time and closed when our client closed it (code 1000).

Waking from sleep. On 19 September 2026 we picked three sleeping apps at random for each stack, confirmed through Fly.io's API that each app's machine was stopped, and timed one request to the home page followed immediately by a second, from a connection in India. One of the three Vite apps did not answer within 60 seconds and is left out of the table. Times include the network round trip to Singapore.

Sources

Checked on 19 September 2026. The date after each Heroku page is the "last updated" date the page showed.

• Heroku pricing (dynos, Postgres, Key-Value Store): https://www.heroku.com/pricing/
• Dyno tiers, on which dynos sleep: https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/dyno-tiers
• An Update on Heroku, by Nitin T Bhat (6 February 2026): https://www.heroku.com/blog/an-update-on-heroku/
• Request timeout (28 January 2026): https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/request-timeout
• WebSockets on Heroku (12 February 2025): https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/websockets
• Regions (19 May 2025): https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/regions
• Heroku MCP server: https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/heroku-mcp-server and https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/heroku-remote-mcp-server
• Antideploy pricing: https://antideploy.com/pricing
• Antideploy terms: https://antideploy.com/terms
• Antideploy agent instructions: https://antideploy.com/llms.txt and the API contract: https://antideploy.com/api/v1