Frontend and app hosting · Comparison
Cloudflare Workers vs Heroku vs Render
3 products compared side by side: what you pay for with each one first, then the five access facts, entry prices, recorded plan limits and the bottom line of each review. The evidence note under the table says how each product was checked.
Side by side
| Metric | Cloudflare Workers | Heroku | Render |
|---|---|---|---|
| What you're paying for | Worth the priceA full-stack app platform for $5 a month per account, with no data transfer charges, free static asset requests and dashboard SSO on every plan. | Saves engineering timePush code and run it on managed dynos with no bandwidth or seat charges, from $7 a month for an always-on Basic dyno. | Saves engineering timeManaged web services, Postgres and Key Value behind one workspace plan, with unlimited seats and audit logs from the $25 Pro plan. |
| Overall score | 8.6Best | 6.2 | 7.7 |
| Free option | Free plan | Paid only | Free plan |
| Card to start | –Not measured | –Not measured | –Not measured |
| Getting access | Self-serve | Self-serve | Self-serve |
| Starter priceCheapest paid plan | $5/mo | $5/mo | $25/mo |
| Pricing model | Usage-based | Usage-based | Seat + usage |
| Pricing page | Public prices | Public prices | Public prices |
| Billing units | Requests that run code and CPU time | Dynos and add-ons, prorated to the second | Workspace plan and instances, then bandwidth and build minutes |
| Free plan | 100,000 requests/day; commercial use not addressed | None; Eco dynos $5/mo for personal apps | Hobby: 1 member, 750 free instance hours; not for production |
| 3 developers, 10M requests, 1 TB/mo | $5.12 on Workers Paid, computed | $7 on one Basic dyno, computed | $178.25 on Pro, computed |
| Data transfer | Not charged | Not billed; 2 TB per app soft limit | 25 GB on Pro, then $0.15/GB; 1 TB on Scale |
| Seats for people who deploy | No per-member charge listed | Heroku Teams: no seat charge, up to 25 members | Unlimited on Pro, no seat charge |
| SAML SSO | Dashboard SSO free on all plans | Heroku Teams, no extra charge | Scale ($499/mo) |
| Spend cap | Budget alerts only; they do not pause usage | None stated | Spend limit for build minutes only; usage emails |
| SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001 | Both | Both (reports by request) | Both (documents on Pro, under NDA) |
| HIPAA BAA | Not stated | Shield Private Space (up to $3,000/mo), by ticket | Scale, with 20% added to usage |
| Runtime logs, entry paid plan | 7 days (Logpush to export) | Last 1,500 lines, up to 1 week; drains to export | 14 days (log streams to export) |
| Audit logs | All plans, kept 18 months | Enterprise accounts only, not sold to new customers | Pro (workspace), at least 90 days |
| Bottom line | From its public pages, Cloudflare Workers costs the least here by a wide margin for traffic-heavy apps, with SSO and audit logs on every plan. Plan for budget alerts that notify rather than stop, and an adapter for Next.js. | From its public pages, Heroku covers our scenario for $7 and charges neither seats nor bandwidth. It scores lower on this rubric for having no free plan, no stored logs and no audit trail for new customers, and it is now in a sustaining engineering model. | From its public pages, Render suits teams that want services and databases managed together, with no seat charges and audit logs on Pro. Bandwidth is the cost to watch: 1 TB a month adds $146.25 on Pro. |
Evidence: Cloudflare Workers: facts checked 2026-10-15 from its public sign-up and pricing pages, no completed hands-on run; Heroku: facts checked 2026-10-15 from its public sign-up and pricing pages, no completed hands-on run; Render: facts checked 2026-10-15 from its public sign-up and pricing pages, no completed hands-on run. Prices in USD as listed, excluding tax. "–" means not recorded.
When to pick each
In the words of each review, with the date its facts were checked.
From our Heroku review
Checked Oct 15, 2026- Pick Heroku when
- Your app moves a lot of data, or you want SAML SSO without a $499 plan.
- Pick Render when
- You want a free tier to try things, and audit logs and 14-day log retention on the $25 Pro plan.
From our Render review
Checked Oct 15, 2026- Pick Render when
- You want a free tier to try things, and audit logs and 14-day log retention on the $25 Pro plan.
- Pick Heroku when
- Your app moves a lot of data: Heroku does not bill data transfer, and one $7 Basic dyno covers our scenario.
Entry price
Baseline: each product's cheapest paid plan, per month. Included usage differs, so read the line under each price.
- Cloudflare WorkersWorkers Paid$5/moMinimum per account; 10M requests and 30M CPU ms a month included
- $0.30 per additional million requests
- $0.02 per additional million CPU milliseconds
- No charge for duration or data transfer
- 6,000 build minutes, then $0.005 a minute
- Workers Logs kept 7 days; Logpush export
- HerokuEco$5/mo1,000 dyno hours a month shared across Eco dynos; personal apps only
- Sleeps after 30 minutes of inactivity
- Not available to Heroku Teams
- RenderWeb service instance$7/mo0.5 CPU, 512 MB; 1 CPU, 2 GB is $25; prorated by the second
- Postgres from $6 and Key Value from $10 a month
- Static sites free to deploy
Prices as listed on each pricing page, in USD per month, excluding tax. Observed: Cloudflare Workers 2026-10-15, Heroku 2026-10-15, Render 2026-10-15.
Which one fits
- If you need to start today without a sales call
- Cloudflare WorkersSelf-serve sign-up; the highest score of the 3 self-serve products here (8.6/10).
- Lowest starter price
- Cloudflare Workers and Heroku$5/mo for the Workers Paid plan each.
- Highest overall score
- Cloudflare Workers8.6/10 (Excellent). The review shows the score breakdown and the run behind it.
Picked by fixed rules from the table above, not by hand. How we score
Full reviews
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