Table of Contents
- Why teams are leaving Heroku
- Clever Cloud
- Scalingo
- Koyeb
- Northflank
- Upsun (formerly Platform.sh)
- Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Heroku is one of the best-known managed platforms, and for years it was the default choice for getting an app online fast. Since Heroku announced its "sustaining engineering model", a lot of teams started looking at alternatives, and specifically at EU Heroku alternatives when they need platforms that are EU-owned, sovereign, and GDPR-aligned.
This post compares five of them:
- Clever Cloud
- Scalingo
- Koyeb
- Northflank
- Upsun (formerly Platform.sh)
Why teams are leaving Heroku
When a platform enters a "sustaining" phase, it usually means fewer new features and slower innovation. For teams building on Heroku, that is a signal to evaluate where their workloads run, especially if they also care about where their data is hosted. EU-based companies in finance, healthcare, and AI increasingly want platforms that are owned and operated inside the EU, so that their infrastructure stays under European jurisdiction and aligned with GDPR.
The five platforms below each take a different approach, but all of them offer a Heroku-like developer experience (Git-driven deploys, managed services, environment configuration) while being EU-based or EU-friendly.
Clever Cloud
The first on the list is Clever Cloud, a company from France. It is more contemporary than Heroku, so it depends less on third-party add-ons.
1. Git push, anyone?
Clever Cloud offers the same git push experience as Heroku, using git push clever master. It supports the major language runtimes, including Node.js, Java, Python, PHP, and Ruby. It also supports Dockerfiles like Heroku does, but you can spin up apps without them.
2. Managed services like databases and Redis
Clever Cloud has its own managed databases, including PostgreSQL, MySQL, Redis, and Kafka, with the usual daily snapshots and backups, just like Heroku.
3. Add-on marketplace (Heroku Elements equivalent)
Heroku leans heavily on its add-on marketplace (around 200 plugins) to give users services like static IPs, VPNs, buildpacks, databases, MCP servers, logging, monitoring, and message queues. Clever Cloud does not currently have an open marketplace like Heroku's; most of its components are built in-house, so you don't get the flexibility of installing a community add-on. That isn't a dealbreaker, just something to keep in mind.
4. Review apps
Heroku has a feature called Review Apps, which are disposable apps you can spin up and tear down to test changes. Clever Cloud has a similar feature called Preview Environments (also referred to as Ephemeral Environments).
5. Environment variables and config management
Secrets and environment variable management on Clever Cloud works much like Heroku: you can set them through the cloud dashboard or through the CLI (clever-tools).
To get a feel for building something on Clever Cloud, check out their quickstart guide. Worth noting: Clever Cloud has a couple of features Heroku doesn't offer:
- Zero-downtime deployments via rolling updates
- Cellar, an integrated S3-compatible object storage service hosted natively on their infrastructure
Scalingo
The second option is another French company, Scalingo. If you want something close to a Heroku clone, Scalingo gets very close. Here's the same detailed comparison.
1. Git push?
Scalingo also follows the classic Heroku git push flow, git push scalingo master, and it detects configuration files like app.json and Procfile natively. It uses Heroku's exact buildpack architecture, so in theory a migration from Heroku to Scalingo wouldn't require changes to your deployment workflow.
2. Managed components?
On Scalingo you get managed databases like PostgreSQL, MySQL, Redis, MongoDB, and Elasticsearch. Similar to Clever Cloud, but Scalingo uses fixed pricing: you choose a plan with a specific amount of CPU, RAM, and so on, and you upgrade when you hit a limit.
Clever Cloud, by contrast, uses a pay-as-you-go model where you're billed for what you actually use. Depending on your workload, that can make Clever Cloud more cost-efficient than Scalingo.
3. Add-on marketplace?
Scalingo does have a marketplace for add-ons, but it's a closed one and the add-ons appear to be built in-house, not an open marketplace like Heroku's. At the time of writing you can find a few add-ons on their add-ons page, such as a TCP gateway, a Scalingo Docker image, and Scalingo OpenVPN.
4. Review apps?
Yes, Scalingo also has review apps, and they work much like Heroku's.
5. Config vars and env management?
It works identically to Heroku. You can set variables in the dashboard or through the CLI:
scalingo env-set KEY=value
List them with:
scalingo env
And remove one with:
scalingo env-unset KEY
What's different about Scalingo compared to Heroku:
- Native autoscaling (apps scale by demand across tiers)
- Dashboard live metrics (RAM, CPU, networking; on Heroku those metrics are reserved for higher plans)
- EU sovereignty (they host their infrastructure exclusively in France, which keeps it outside foreign-state influence, an increasingly important factor for EU companies in finance, healthcare, AI, and other critical industries)
If you're after a close Heroku clone and don't mind a higher price, Scalingo is one of the strongest candidates.
Koyeb
Koyeb is an interesting example. Koyeb was acquired by Mistral AI, which makes it an EU-owned entity. Unlike the two French companies above, it is primarily a serverless platform.
1. Git push?
Koyeb does it a little differently. It has its own CLI, but the standard git push flow isn't the model. Instead, Koyeb tracks pushes to your Git repository, pulls down your code, builds it using buildpacks or a Dockerfile, and publishes it live.
2. Managed components?
Koyeb supports PostgreSQL mainly, with others like MongoDB and MySQL also available through their one-click apps.
3. Add-on marketplace?
Koyeb doesn't really have a marketplace; it has a library of one-click apps. For example, if you need Redis or Tailscale, you'd install them through the one-click app library.
4. Review apps?
Koyeb doesn't have built-in review-app capabilities like Heroku, so you'd need to build that workflow yourself.
5. Config vars and env management?
On Koyeb these work much the same way, through the Koyeb CLI or the web dashboard.
Notable Koyeb features:
- A free tier, reminiscent of Heroku's earlier days
- Instead of standard Linux containers, Koyeb uses Firecracker MicroVMs
- Advanced autoscaling, available on lower tiers too
- A global edge network with a built-in CDN
- AI and GPU workloads, including one-click deployments for high-performance GPUs
Northflank
Northflank is the first company on this list that isn't French; it's based in the UK. Northflank is a full-stack container platform rather than a traditional Heroku-style buildpack PaaS, so the model is closer to "deploy anything that runs in a container" with Git-driven workflows on top.
1. Git push?
Northflank connects to your Git repository and builds your containers automatically, with bidirectional Git sync so the platform and your repository stay in step. You can deploy from Git or from a container image.
2. Managed components?
Northflank offers managed add-ons including PostgreSQL, MySQL, MongoDB, Redis, and MinIO, with backup scheduling and the ability to fork databases from existing backups.
3. Add-on marketplace?
Rather than Heroku's open community marketplace, Northflank provides a curated set of managed services and one-click deployments for common databases and tools.
4. Review apps?
Northflank supports preview and ephemeral environments, so you can spin up disposable environments for testing, similar in spirit to Heroku Review Apps.
5. Config vars and env management?
Environment variables and secrets are managed through the Northflank UI or via its CLI, comparable to the Heroku dashboard and CLI experience.
What stands out about Northflank:
- A developer-friendly UI for building, deploying, and scaling containers, jobs, and databases in one place
- Built-in load balancing, DNS, storage, and orchestration, so you don't manage the underlying infrastructure
- UK/EU hosting with GDPR compliance
Upsun (formerly Platform.sh)
Upsun is the current name of Platform.sh, and it takes a notably different approach from the others: infrastructure as code.
1. Git push?
Deployment is Git-driven. You write your application code along with a few YAML files that describe the desired infrastructure, commit them to Git, and push. The platform provisions and deploys automatically, following a GitOps workflow.
2. Managed components?
Upsun provides fully managed services with polyglot runtime support, so multi-stack teams can bring different languages and frameworks under one platform. Configuration lives in YAML (for example, an app config file plus a .platform/routes.yaml file).
3. Add-on marketplace?
Upsun's model replaces a traditional tiered add-on marketplace with a single YAML configuration that defines your services. You describe what you need in code rather than picking from a list of plans.
4. Review apps?
Upsun offers unlimited preview environments, each tied to a Git branch, and source integrations can spin up environments automatically from pull requests.
5. Config vars and env management?
Configuration and environment variables are defined declaratively in the YAML files and version-controlled alongside your code, which fits teams that want reproducible, reviewable infrastructure.
What's distinct about Upsun:
- Usage-based billing (per CPU-hour, GB-hour, project, user, and backup), with a separate Fixed pricing tier for predictable costs
- Continuous Delivery by default, with built-in observability
- A good fit for teams that already think in terms of configuration files and GitOps
Need a static outbound IP for your EU-hosted app?
Whichever platform you pick, if your workloads call partner APIs that require IP allowlisting, you still need a stable egress IP. OutboundGateway is an EU-owned static outbound IP proxy that gives your app two fixed static EU IPs with automatic failover, so your partners can allowlist you once and forget about it. It works with any of the platforms above through a single HTTPS_PROXY environment variable, keeps your traffic inside EU jurisdiction, and never terminates TLS. Sign up for OutboundGateway here →
Built with ❤️ for EU businesses who care about privacy and sovereignty.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Which EU Heroku alternative is closest to Heroku itself?
Scalingo is generally considered the closest clone. It uses Heroku's buildpack architecture, supports the same git push flow, detects app.json and Procfile natively, and is hosted exclusively in France. If your priority is a minimal-change migration from Heroku, Scalingo is a strong starting point.
Which of these platforms is best for container-based deployments?
Northflank is the most container-focused option on the list. It's a full-stack container platform that builds from your Git repository (or a container image), and includes load balancing, DNS, storage, orchestration, and managed databases like PostgreSQL, MySQL, MongoDB, Redis, and MinIO. Teams that already containerize their apps tend to fit Northflank naturally.
How does Upsun's pricing differ from a fixed-plan Heroku dyno?
Upsun (formerly Platform.sh) uses usage-based billing, charging per CPU-hour, GB-hour, project, user, and backup, rather than fixed dyno sizes. It also offers a separate Fixed pricing tier for teams that want predictable costs. Because the bill scales with actual resource use, a small app can vary in cost month to month, so it's worth modeling your expected usage before committing.
