Heroku vs Vercel

Heroku and Vercel use distinct deployment models despite both supporting Git-based deployments and Node.js applications: Heroku runs long-lived containerized dynos for web servers, workers, and one-off tasks, while Vercel emphasizes globally delivered frontend applications with request-driven Functions on Fluid compute. Heroku is positioned for persistent APIs, queue consumers, background jobs, and attached first-party services such as Heroku Postgres, but incurs wall-clock charges whenever dynos are running; Vercel is better suited to frontend-heavy framework applications and bursty workloads, billing for requests, data transfer, and active compute, though function duration, memory limits, and beta-stage Daemons can constrain continuous backend work. Vercel relies on Marketplace database providers such as Neon, Supabase, and Aurora Postgres, whereas Heroku integrates managed databases and other add-ons directly into its platform. Illustrative pricing for an app with a frontend, API, continuous worker, and Postgres estimates roughly $59 monthly on Heroku, $54 plus additional usage for a Vercel-Heroku split stack, and $56 on Render, which the source presents as a single-platform alternative for applications requiring both static frontend delivery and persistent backend services.

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