Compare / Heroku vs Google Cloud Run
Heroku vs Google Cloud Run
Pre-calculated from hand-checked data — Heroku checked 2026-08-06, Google Cloud Run checked 2026-08-06.
The short version
Google Cloud Run 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 Tie
Google Cloud Run costs less while you're starting out, but Heroku works out cheaper once traffic grows.
Ease Tie
Both take similar effort to get a first deploy live.
Control Heroku
Heroku gives you more control over the stack — the flip side of the convenience trade.
Free tier Google Cloud Run
Google Cloud Run has a free tier; Heroku doesn't.
Features Google Cloud Run
Google Cloud Run comes out ahead on 5 of the 15 features we track, versus 3.
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 | Google Cloud Run | |
|---|---|---|
| Best for | Teams that already know Heroku and value its mature workflow over price. | Container apps with spiky or low traffic that want scale-to-zero economics and can manage billing discipline. |
| How deploys work | git push heroku main; buildpacks detect the stack and the platform handles the rest. | Run `gcloud run deploy --source .` — buildpacks containerize the app, or push any Docker image; GitHub continuous deployment is built in. |
| The tradeoff | You pay a platform premium — comparable raw compute costs a third as much elsewhere. | The best free tier and autoscaling here, attached to a billing system with no hard cap and real horror stories. |
| Free tier | None | Always free: 2M requests, 180k vCPU-seconds, 360k GiB-seconds per month, plus a $300/90-day new-customer credit. |
What you'd realistically pay
Heroku Google Cloud Run
| Project stage | Heroku | Google Cloud Run | 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. | Free Free tier — A scale-to-zero service with hobby traffic typically rounds to $0 — the always-free tier absorbs it. | Google Cloud Run |
| Steady traffic | ≈$25/mo Standard-1X — Adds horizontal scaling and zero-downtime deploys; database still extra. | ≈$10/mo Pay-as-you-go + 1 warm instance — One min-instance (1 vCPU, 512 MiB at the idle rate) is ~$10/month; request costs on top are usually small. | Google Cloud Run |
| Growing | ≈$50/mo Standard dynos + add-ons — Two Standard-1X dynos; realistic totals depend heavily on add-ons. | ≈$58/mo Always-on + Cloud SQL — ~$50/month for an always-on 1 vCPU / 1 GiB service (instance-based billing) plus ~$7.67 for a db-f1-micro Cloud SQL instance. | Heroku |
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).
Google Cloud Run pricing notes
- Egress: first 1 GiB/month free, then $0.12/GiB to NA/EU/Asia.
- Tier 2 regions cost more; committed-use discounts take ~17% off.
- The $300 new-customer credit runs 90 days and cannot produce a bill — the account closes instead of charging you.
Our ratings
Ease of use
Pricing clarity Heroku
Free tier Google Cloud Run
Scaling Google Cloud Run
Control Heroku
Feature by feature
Heroku wins 3, Google Cloud Run wins 5, with 7 even.
Deploy workflow
| Heroku | Google Cloud Run | |
|---|---|---|
| Deploy from Git push | Yes git push heroku main is the original deploy story; GitHub integration too. | Yes Built-in continuous deployment from GitHub, or deploy from source with gcloud. |
| Preview deploys | Yes Review Apps create a running app per pull request. | Partial Every deploy creates a tagged revision you can hit directly and split traffic to — but no automatic PR previews. |
| Official CLI | Yes The heroku CLI covers deploys, logs, scaling, and add-ons. | Yes `gcloud run` covers deploys, revisions, and traffic splits. |
| Instant rollbacks | Yes heroku releases:rollback reverts to any previous release instantly. | Yes Shift traffic back to any previous revision instantly. |
Platform
| Heroku | Google Cloud Run | |
|---|---|---|
| Custom domains + HTTPS | Yes Custom domains with automated certificate management on paid dynos. | Partial Domain mappings exist but Google steers production setups toward a load balancer, which adds cost and setup. |
| Built-in CDN / edge network | No No built-in CDN — pair with Cloudflare or Fastly yourself. | Partial Cloud CDN is available but requires fronting Cloud Run with a load balancer. |
| Serverless functions | No Dynos are long-running processes; there is no function product. | Yes The whole platform is serverless; Cloud Run functions cover event-driven code. |
| Docker containers | Yes Deploy container images through the Heroku container registry. | Yes Runs any container image — that is the product. |
| SSH / shell access | Partial heroku run bash gives a one-off shell in a fresh dyno, not the live one. | No No servers to reach. |
| EU hosting region | Yes Common Runtime offers a Europe region at the same prices. | Yes A dozen-plus EU regions, four of them at Tier 1 pricing. |
Runtime & operations
| Heroku | Google Cloud Run | |
|---|---|---|
| Automatic scaling | Partial Built-in autoscaling requires Performance-tier dynos; standard dynos scale manually. | Yes Scales per request from zero to your max-instances setting. |
| Scale to zero | Partial Eco dynos sleep after 30 idle minutes; Basic and Standard run continuously. | Yes Idle services cost nothing unless you set min-instances. |
| Scheduled jobs | Yes Heroku Scheduler (free add-on) runs tasks on a schedule. | Yes Cloud Scheduler triggers services; Cloud Run jobs handle batch work. |
| Managed database | Yes Heroku Postgres and Key-Value Store are fully managed add-ons. | Yes Cloud SQL from ~$7.67/month (no SLA at that size); Firestore and AlloyDB nearby. |
| Logs & metrics built in | Partial Log stream and basic metrics included; serious monitoring means add-ons. | Yes Cloud Logging, Monitoring, and request traces are built in. |
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.
Google Cloud Run
- There is no hard spend cap anywhere in Google Cloud — budgets only send alerts. The community horror stories ($4.6k on an idle setup, $18k against a $7 budget) are real.
- Min-instances are the classic trap: a warm instance bills around $10/month, and old revisions can silently keep their own min-instances.
- Egress costs $0.12/GiB after the first free GiB — heavy traffic gets expensive fast.
- Since March 2026 Google can automatically raise your spending-tier quotas, which amplifies leaked-API-key incidents.
Read the full reviews: Heroku and Google Cloud Run. Or answer four questions to see what fits your project.