Amazon AWS vs Heroku comparison

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Amazon AWS

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 15, 2024

Amazon AWS and Heroku are competing in the cloud services category. Amazon AWS has the upper hand due to its extensive deployment capabilities, high performance, and wide range of features.

Features: Amazon AWS includes comprehensive deployment features, exceptional load balancing, and robust security integrations, offering an extensive range of connectors. It supports numerous operating systems and programming models, providing flexibility and scalability for various applications. Heroku is recognized for its ease of use, fast deployment, and scalable solutions, supporting quick application development without needing infrastructure management.

Room for Improvement: Amazon AWS could improve its integration with other platforms, streamline its sorting model for simplicity, and reduce licensing costs. Enhancements in security features and cost transparency are also needed. Heroku users express concerns about pricing, limited free service options, and the requirement for more scalability. The platform lacks Docker CI integration, and daily restarts can be an issue for some users.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Amazon AWS is known for its powerful deployment options and wide support across hybrid and public cloud models. Customer service is generally positive, though response times can be slower than some competitors. Heroku excels in deployment ease, offering rapid application implementation with minimal maintenance, focusing on public cloud functionality. Its support is good but could benefit from faster response times.

Pricing and ROI: Amazon AWS features a competitive pay-as-you-go model, noted for scalability, though transparency in cost predictions requires attention. Some users consider it expensive yet beneficial due to the lack of initial investments. Heroku's pricing is perceived as high at scale, although the free tier appeals to small-scale projects. AWS targets large-scale global infrastructure, while Heroku provides cost-effective options for swift deployments with minimal infrastructure management.

To learn more, read our detailed Amazon AWS vs. Heroku Report (Updated: August 2026).

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Amazon AWS vs. Heroku

August 2026

Helped 908,800 peers since 2012

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

Amazon AWS

Ranking in PaaS Clouds

2nd

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

260

Ranking in other categories

Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) (2nd)

Heroku

Ranking in PaaS Clouds

12th

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the PaaS Clouds category, the mindshare of Amazon AWS is 13.8%, up from 12.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Heroku is 2.8%, down from 3.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

PaaS Clouds Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Amazon AWS	13.8%
Heroku	2.8%
Other	83.4%

PaaS Clouds

Featured Reviews

Asif Meem

Senior Machine Learning Engineer at sportsbet

Managed cloud services have helped accelerate experiments with flexible configuration options

Sometimes the costs associated with spinning up a service, especially managed services, have implications. For example, if I create a Glue job, that will create S3 buckets and other resources that have cost implications, but once I clean up a Glue job, it does not delete the other accessory resources. Sometimes, I have to go hunting for what resources Amazon AWS might have provisioned and how it is costing behind the scenes. It can be complex depending on your level of expertise. It is not as easy to get started, especially when it comes to secure practices. Amazon AWS is more hands-on than other platforms.

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Cristian-Molina

Senior Developer at Go Coeupas

Has a quick development cycle and continuous integration

The initial setup is straightforward. Heroku integrates well. You only have to push the code, and it automatically deploys the new version. Whether you have permission depends on the application. Currently, I have one application that I deploy myself. I rate the initial setup a nine out of ten, where one is difficult and ten is easy.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Support is really good."

"AWS is incredibly stable."

"I have found the trusted advisor tool works well, we are using it to get some insight into the security status and the processing of the applications."

"This solution is very easy to use and it has a professional interface."

"Accelerates innovation through fast experimentation cycles in an agile, flexible, and scalable platform."

"The technical support of AWS is very good; when I need something, they reach out to me fast."

"The most valuable features are how stable and easy to use Amazon AWS is."

"The solution is absolutely stable, and this is one of its best features."

More Amazon AWS pros

"My advice for anybody who is considering Heroku is that it's really simple to use, it's stable, and it is very powerful for continuous deployment."

"It is easy to deploy applications, and we don't need to bother about software updates on the server. We don't need to bother about machines, servers, and hardware. We only need to care about the system and functionality that we need or want to develop. They take care of everything else. It provides high availability. It is a pretty good solution that provides everything that we need. It has everything that we need to run our applications. We have many different applications, and we generate three million bills for a company in Brazil. We see more than a billion requests per day in another application. Everything works just fine, and it is very good."

"We use Heroku to run generic data. We also use it for our customer development environment. It helps us to build and test websites."

"Easy, fast, fun, and extendable."

"Lots of integrations"

"The solution's most valuable feature is the auto maintenance of databases."

"The product is stable."

"I have been a great fan of Heroku as it simplified my work for many years."

More Heroku pros

Cons

"They can launch the Oracle service in Azure, and we expect that this should be possible in Amazon AWS as well."

"AWS cloud has an issue with accessibility to the customer, it's very limited and if there's an internal issue, we won't know about it because they don't expose their APIs to many things."

"AWS has room for improvement on the Kubernetes side."

"The interface is relatively complex. It's not complex when you compare it to Azure, but with some other competitors, it is a little complex."

"RDS doesn't have shell access, which could be especially beneficial for Oracle databases."

"They should have a better big data stack."

"Amazon needs to develop better tools for troubleshooting network traffic, application insights, performance, and even some aspects of integration mapping. I'm hoping AWS implements something like Azure's Network Watcher and a log analytics solution where a can pull logs from various services and present them in a single dashboard. I want to summarize the performance and usage of every service and application."

"The interface needs a bit of work. It's not intuitive."

More Amazon AWS cons

"Heroku should increase its slug size limits."

"Heroku had an authentication problem a few months ago, but they solved it."

"Slow restart on servers"

"Plugins aren't cheap (Mailchimp is $1.5/1000 emails)."

"The pricing could be improved because scaling the database becomes costly."

"I had an issue recently where my site was down intermittently for unknown reasons. I posted a ticket and 5 days have gone by without any resolution."

"I think this solution would be improved if free demos were available indefinitely."

"There is an issue because Heroku supports Docker container images, but not if you're using the continuous integration infrastructure."

More Heroku cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Its pricing can be simplified a little bit more. Even though they have been reducing it, I still believe they can do better as compared to GCP, Google Cloud."

"It's my understanding that our company is charged a few hundred dollars on a monthly basis."

"Amazon AWS is on the cheaper side, as their pricing is more competitive. There are no additional costs besides the license. However, Azure sells Microsoft licenses, so they have an advantage."

"It seems to be reasonable. It's the first one that I've used as a cloud platform, so they've set the benchmark for me, and now, I'm comparing everything else to them."

"Reasonably priced and comparable to similar services."

"There are no additional costs beyond the standard licensing fees."

"The pricing depends on the workload. For example, if your workload involves Windows technologies, AWS may not be the most cost-effective option. In that case, you might be better off with Azure."

"Pricing is an area that can be improved because it is very complicated. It considers the number of processes, bandwidth, and different kinds of usage. This makes it difficult to predict."

More Amazon AWS pricing and cost advice

"The price of Heroku could be less expensive."

"Its price is very good."

"I rate the tool's pricing a three out of ten."

"There is a standard fee for a processing unit, they call them "dynos," and then you pay for add-ons."

"The tool is free."

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which PaaS Clouds solutions are best for your needs.

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Comparison Review

it_user8586

Engineer at a tech consulting company with 51-200 employees

Aug 14, 2013

Amazon vs Rackspace vs Microsoft vs Google: Cloud Hosting Services Comparison

Amazon Web Services, Rackspace OpenStack, Microsoft Windows Azure and Google are the major cloud hosting and storage service providers. Athough Amazon is top of them and is oldest in cloud market, Rackspace, Microsoft and Google are giving tough competition to each other and to Amazon also for…

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

12%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Construction Company

Outsourcing Company

Financial Services Firm

10%

Construction Company

Computer Software Company

University

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	131
Midsize Enterprise	48
Large Enterprise	120

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	23
Midsize Enterprise	2
Large Enterprise	3

Questions from the Community

How does OpenShift compare with Amazon AWS?

Open Shift makes managing infrastructure easy because of self-healing and automatic scaling. There is also a wonderful dashboard mechanism to alert us in case the application is over-committing or ...

How is SAP Cloud Platform different than Amazon AWS?

How is SAP Cloud Platform different than Amazon AWS? Amazon AWS offers options both in terms of upgrading and expanding capabilities as well as acquiring greater storage space. These upgrades can ...

Looking to compare Google Firebase, Amazon AWS, and Microsoft Azure

We like Google Firebase hosting and authentication and also the excellent cloud functionality. Our team found the flexibility of handling and dealing with the database through EDL to be very useful...

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 ...

Akamai Connected Cloud (Linode) vs Amazon AWS

Comparisons

Compared 21% of the time

Dell ObjectScale vs Amazon AWS

Compared 6% of the time

SAP Business Technology Platform vs Amazon AWS

Compared 6% of the time

Microsoft Azure vs Amazon AWS

Compared 4% of the time

Red Hat OpenShift vs Amazon AWS

Compared 3% of the time

More Amazon AWS Competitors

Microsoft Azure vs Heroku

Compared 11% of the time

Google App Engine vs Heroku

Compared 10% of the time

Render vs Heroku

Compared 8% of the time

Engine Yard Cloud vs Heroku

Compared 7% of the time

Virtuozzo Application Platform vs Heroku

Compared 6% of the time

More Heroku Competitors

Product Reports

Download Amazon AWS product report

Amazon AWS

August 2026

Download Heroku product report

July 2026

Also Known As

Amazon Web Services, AWS

No data available

Overview

Amazon AWS offers cloud services known for ease of use, scalability, and diverse services such as EC2, S3, and Lambda. Its pay-as-you-go pricing and robust security features make it a preferred choice for businesses managing growing demands efficiently.

Amazon AWS provides a comprehensive ecosystem with services like EC2 for computing, S3 for storage, and Lambda for serverless computing. It emphasizes scalability and quick resource provisioning, allowing businesses to handle IT workloads, host websites, and manage analytics seamlessly. AWS integrates a wide range of services, enhancing flexibility and reliability while offering robust security and automated management to streamline operations.

What are the most important features of Amazon AWS?

EC2: Offers scalable computing capacity in the cloud to manage business applications efficiently.
S3: Provides highly secure, durable, and scalable cloud storage solutions for data archiving and backup.
Lambda: Enables running code without provisioning or managing servers, improving application deployment.
Pricing: Employs a pay-as-you-go model, allowing cost-effective resource usage.
Security: Implements comprehensive security protocols to ensure data protection across services.

What benefits should users look for in reviews?

Scalability: Supports business growth by easily scaling resources according to demand.
Integration: Offers seamless integration capabilities with numerous services, enhancing operational flexibility.
Performance: Provides stable and reliable performance for critical IT workloads and applications.
Management: Features automated management tools that reduce overhead and improve deployment efficiency.

Amazon AWS is widely implemented across industries for cloud computing, infrastructure hosting, and data storage. Businesses in finance, healthcare, and technology sectors leverage AWS for running applications, hosting analytics databases, and deploying scalable solutions. By utilizing tools like EC2, S3, and Lambda, they ensure flexibility and security in infrastructure management and data applications, meeting diverse operational needs effectively.

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Heroku offers fast deployment with ease of use and seamless integration capabilities, making it a preferred platform for developers needing reliable continuous integration and scalability.

Heroku is known for handling server-related tasks, allowing developers to concentrate on building application functionality. Its automatic database maintenance and powerful performance are key for projects using Node.js and Ruby on Rails. Users appreciate its simple application deployment and maintenance, supported by a diverse range of plugins. Beyond efficiency, its CLI and dashboards enable a straightforward user experience, essential for developers focused on production, staging, and development environments.

What are Heroku's key features?

Fast Deployment: Offers rapid application deployment with minimal setup.
Continuous Integration: Supports streamlined integration processes for development cycles.
Scalability: Easily scales applications to meet growing demand.
High Availability: Ensures applications remain online and responsive.
Automatic Database Maintenance: Provides hands-off management of database tasks.

What benefits should users look for in reviews?

Ease of Use: Simplifies complex tasks, allowing developers to focus on coding.
Integration Capabilities: Connects seamlessly with tools like GitHub for updates.
Performance: Delivers consistent, reliable application performance.
Development Flexibility: Supports Node.js, Ruby on Rails, and Docker environments.

Organizations use Heroku to deploy production servers and stage development environments. Educational apps and offsite backends benefit from its Docker support. E-commerce, mobile app development, and web apps leverage Heroku's ability to maintain rapid development cycles and manage server deployment efficiently.

Sample Customers

Pinterest, General Electric, Pfizer, Netflix, and Nasdaq.

Facebook, UrbanDictionary, Code for America, Mailchimp, Rapportive, GitHub, TED, and Lyft.