Compare / Heroku vs AWS Lightsail
Heroku vs AWS Lightsail
Pre-calculated from hand-checked data — Heroku checked 2026-08-06, AWS Lightsail checked 2026-08-06.
The short version
AWS Lightsail wins more of our comparison points, but Heroku still fits if teams that already know Heroku and value its mature workflow over price describes you.
Price AWS Lightsail
AWS Lightsail is cheaper at most of the stages we model.
Ease Heroku
Heroku is easier to get running: git push heroku main; buildpacks detect the stack and the platform handles the rest.
Control AWS Lightsail
AWS Lightsail gives you more control over the stack — the flip side of the convenience trade.
Free tier AWS Lightsail
AWS Lightsail has a free tier; Heroku doesn't.
Features Heroku
Heroku comes out ahead on 5 of the 15 features we track, versus 2.
What developers say about this matchup
We couldn't find a substantive first-person discussion comparing this exact pair. We leave the section empty instead of filling it with vendor marketing or generic SEO comparisons.
At a glance
| Heroku | AWS Lightsail | |
|---|---|---|
| Best for | Teams that already know Heroku and value its mature workflow over price. | Projects that want predictable AWS — a fixed-price server with a clear upgrade path into the wider AWS ecosystem. |
| How deploys work | git push heroku main; buildpacks detect the stack and the platform handles the rest. | Pick a blueprint (WordPress, LAMP, Node.js, plain Linux), get SSH in the browser or your terminal, and manage it like any VPS. |
| The tradeoff | You pay a platform premium — comparable raw compute costs a third as much elsewhere. | Costs more per spec than the European VPS crowd, and stopped instances keep billing. |
| Free tier | None | 90-day free trial (750 hours/month) on the $5–$12 Linux bundles and the $15 database, plus $100–$200 in new-account AWS credits. |
What you'd realistically pay
Heroku AWS Lightsail
| Project stage | Heroku | AWS Lightsail | Cheaper |
|---|---|---|---|
| Just starting | ≈$5/mo Eco — One Eco dyno (512 MB) that sleeps after 30 idle minutes; an always-on Basic dyno is $7, and an Essential-0 Postgres adds $5. | ≈$5/mo Nano — 2 vCPU, 512 MB RAM, 20 GB SSD, 1 TB transfer. $3.50 as IPv6-only. Free for the first 90 days. | ≈ Tie |
| Steady traffic | ≈$25/mo Standard-1X — Adds horizontal scaling and zero-downtime deploys; database still extra. | ≈$12/mo Small — 2 vCPU, 2 GB RAM, 60 GB SSD, 3 TB transfer. | AWS Lightsail |
| Growing | ≈$50/mo Standard dynos + add-ons — Two Standard-1X dynos; realistic totals depend heavily on add-ons. | ≈$39/mo Medium + managed database — $24 Medium (4 GB RAM, 4 TB transfer) plus the $15 managed MySQL/PostgreSQL bundle. | AWS Lightsail |
Heroku pricing notes
- Dynos are prorated to the second up to the monthly maximum.
- Heroku Postgres starts at $5/month (Essential-0, 1 GB storage); the Redis-compatible Key-Value Store starts at $3/month (Mini, 25 MB).
AWS Lightsail pricing notes
- Billed hourly up to the monthly cap — partial months cost less, but stopped instances still bill.
- IPv6-only bundles are 20–30% cheaper; an unattached static IPv4 costs ~$3.60/month.
- Bundles scale up to 64 vCPU / 256 GB RAM ($1,764/month), with compute- and memory-optimized variants.
Our ratings
Ease of use Heroku
Pricing clarity
Free tier AWS Lightsail
Scaling Heroku
Control AWS Lightsail
Feature by feature
Heroku wins 5, AWS Lightsail wins 2, with 8 even.
Deploy workflow
| Heroku | AWS Lightsail | |
|---|---|---|
| Deploy from Git push | Yes git push heroku main is the original deploy story; GitHub integration too. | No No deploy pipeline — bring your own CI or scripts. |
| Preview deploys | Yes Review Apps create a running app per pull request. | No Nothing built in. |
| Official CLI | Yes The heroku CLI covers deploys, logs, scaling, and add-ons. | Yes The AWS CLI covers Lightsail end to end. |
| Instant rollbacks | Yes heroku releases:rollback reverts to any previous release instantly. | Partial Snapshots restore machines ($0.05/GB-month); no deploy-level rollback. |
Platform
| Heroku | AWS Lightsail | |
|---|---|---|
| Custom domains + HTTPS | Yes Custom domains with automated certificate management on paid dynos. | Yes Lightsail DNS zones are included; TLS is yours via certbot or a Lightsail distribution. |
| Built-in CDN / edge network | No No built-in CDN — pair with Cloudflare or Fastly yourself. | Yes Lightsail distributions add a CloudFront-backed CDN from $2.50/month (first year of 50 GB/month free). |
| Serverless functions | No Dynos are long-running processes; there is no function product. | No Not in Lightsail — that is the wider AWS (Lambda), with the à la carte billing this product avoids. |
| Docker containers | Yes Deploy container images through the Heroku container registry. | Yes Install Docker on any instance, or use the Lightsail container service from $7/month. |
| SSH / shell access | Partial heroku run bash gives a one-off shell in a fresh dyno, not the live one. | Yes Full root SSH, including a browser-based terminal. |
| EU hosting region | Yes Common Runtime offers a Europe region at the same prices. | Yes Frankfurt, Ireland, London, Paris, Stockholm, and Spain. |
Runtime & operations
| Heroku | AWS Lightsail | |
|---|---|---|
| Automatic scaling | Partial Built-in autoscaling requires Performance-tier dynos; standard dynos scale manually. | No No autoscaling — resize by restoring a snapshot to a bigger bundle. |
| Scale to zero | Partial Eco dynos sleep after 30 idle minutes; Basic and Standard run continuously. | No Stopped instances bill at full rate; only deletion stops charges. |
| Scheduled jobs | Yes Heroku Scheduler (free add-on) runs tasks on a schedule. | Yes Classic cron on the box. |
| Managed database | Yes Heroku Postgres and Key-Value Store are fully managed add-ons. | Yes Managed MySQL/PostgreSQL bundles from $15/month. |
| Logs & metrics built in | Partial Log stream and basic metrics included; serious monitoring means add-ons. | Partial Instance metrics and alarms in the console; deeper monitoring means CloudWatch or your own stack. |
Watch out for
Heroku
- There is no free tier.
- Compute is expensive for what you get: Standard-1X costs $25/month for 512 MB of RAM.
- Databases and other add-ons bill separately and can dominate the total.
AWS Lightsail
- Stopped instances bill at the full rate — only deleting an instance (snapshot first, $0.05/GB-month) stops charges.
- Transfer overage costs $0.09/GB in US/EU regions, and some regions (Mumbai, Sydney, São Paulo…) include only half the listed allowance.
- The new-account AWS Free plan expires after 6 months or when credits run out, then the account auto-closes with a 90-day grace period.
- Outgrowing Lightsail means migrating to EC2 — a real project, not a plan toggle.
Read the full reviews: Heroku and AWS Lightsail. Or answer four questions to see what fits your project.