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Cloud Foundry vs Heroku comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 15, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Cloud Foundry
Ranking in PaaS Clouds
21st
Average Rating
5.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Heroku
Ranking in PaaS Clouds
12th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
29
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the PaaS Clouds category, the mindshare of Cloud Foundry is 2.1%, up from 1.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Heroku is 3.2%, up from 3.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
PaaS Clouds Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Heroku3.2%
Cloud Foundry2.1%
Other94.7%
PaaS Clouds
 

Featured Reviews

Carlos Bittrich - PeerSpot reviewer
Technology Advisor at Fabrik
Quick to deploy but being deprecated by IBM and should be merged with Kubernetes
We enjoy the fast deployment. Cloud Foundry builds the runtime environment directly without requiring dependency management from the developer or administrator. The autoscaling is great. It is just a switch that needs to be turned on, and autoscaling starts working. At this moment, you begin to see different meters about usage that helps you in updating the scaling limits, which help you tune the running instances. Besides this, autoscaling can be scheduled, so in times of low activity, you can have lower limits or increase in advance for special dates. It has good logging. CF has logging events that help identify when a transaction runs and its response time which helps in monitoring execution.
Faizan Haider - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Software Engineer at Aldaim Solutions
Used for server deployment and provides auto maintenance of databases
Heroku is deployed on the cloud. We can deploy our private and public projects over at Heroku. Most of the time, when we are starting any new project from scratch, we have to implement our MVP for that project or the core idea. We are unsure how our traffic flow will go or the actual production environment requirements. We don't want to spend the most on the server sites, so then we can use it with our go-to plan for Heroku, and all the resources are available in the basic plan with the minimum expenses. So, it helps us to deploy and make our features available online at the minimum cost. Once we know our needs, we can add the professional add-ons and shift it to another platform. Heroku supports any resource listed in the marketplace. We just have to deploy our AI solutions, and Heroku can also support AI projects. I would recommend the solution to other users. I advise users not to purchase extra add-ons but to make scalable resources so that they can use all the resources efficiently. Overall, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"By moving to IBM Cloud Foundry, we reduced our project time by a factor of two and decreased costs by a factor of four because it was a PoC."
"Cloud Foundry builds the runtime environment directly without requiring dependency management from the user."
"My favorite component of IBM's solution is Node-RED, which greatly shortens the amount of time required to develop, test, and deploy new applications."
"IBM is the only vendor to offer integration with blockchain for smart contract development."
"Lots of integrations"
"I have been a great fan of Heroku as it simplified my work for many years."
"One of the best things about Heroku is that it is very easy and straightforward to deploy an application."
"It is easy to deploy applications, and we don't need to bother about software updates on the server, machines, servers, and hardware because we only need to care about the system and functionality that we need or want to develop while they take care of everything else."
"Easy, fast, fun, and extendable."
"Valuable for us was the fast deployment. This means the time to market is improved without pain for developers."
"The product is stable."
"The solution's most valuable feature is the auto maintenance of databases."
 

Cons

"After the initial excitement period with Node-RED is over, you crave the need of additional integrations to third-party services."
"After the initial excitement period with Node-RED is over, you crave the need of additional integrations to third-party services."
"In IBM Cloud, the product has been deprecated in favor of Kubernetes, which is a more complicated infrastructure to manage."
"Heroku should increase its slug size limits."
"We would like to be notified when something goes wrong in the process. When something is not working, we should get an alert."
"Heroku is pretty stable. We experience the occasional outages."
"The tool's configuration is complex."
"Heroku doesn't support Docker images on the CI infrastructure."
"Plugins aren't cheap (Mailchimp is $1.5/1000 emails)."
"We don't find the pipelines intuitive. The user experience could be better. Having to set up multiple apps, then a pipeline, seems like an overkill on the amount of work to do."
"Heroku had an authentication problem a few months ago, but they solved it."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"IBM has a free tier and payment option depending on the products selected."
"You are allocated a minimum amount of resources in the free tier. This seems fair and highly scalable, as you pay per usage as per cloud pricing schemes."
"The pricing models should be reworked to the needs of a wider range of companies. Some customers will not be able to afford it until quite a few years into production, even after good PoC results and a successful launch."
"There is a standard fee for a processing unit, they call them "dynos," and then you pay for add-ons."
"The price of Heroku could be less expensive."
"Its price is very good."
"I rate the tool's pricing a three out of ten."
"The tool is free."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
24%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Energy/Utilities Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Computer Software Company
9%
University
8%
Comms Service Provider
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business23
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise3
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
What needs improvement with Heroku?
I don't like that the web server crashes every day, every 24 hours. The pricing could be improved because scaling the database becomes costly. The Docker features are not great. You cannot use any ...
What is your primary use case for Heroku?
We use the solution for web applications and web APIs.
What advice do you have for others considering Heroku?
The integration capabilities are great because of the quick integration and the management features. We don't need a lot of expertise and all external DevOps people. Heroku is the easiest platform ...
 

Comparisons

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Grape Up, c-Com, KONE, TITAN, CSAA, Bosch, Allstate, Verizon, West Corp., Telstra
Facebook, UrbanDictionary, Code for America, Mailchimp, Rapportive, GitHub, TED, and Lyft.
Find out what your peers are saying about Cloud Foundry vs. Heroku and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
893,221 professionals have used our research since 2012.