Canner vs. Heroku
Heroku invented the modern PaaS. Salesforce owns it now. Your data is doubly American.
Heroku is mature, polished, and remains the standard-bearer of the category. It's also a Salesforce subsidiary, which means CLOUD Act exposure runs through the parent company. For Canadian buyers with sovereignty requirements, that's a stopper.
- Heroku's runtime stability is excellent and its add-on ecosystem is vast. Canner is simpler, Canadian-owned, and includes Postgres on every tier.
- Heroku killed the free tier in 2022. The cheapest dyno is US$5/month, with managed Postgres charged separately starting at US$5/month.
- Salesforce's US incorporation is a hard CLOUD Act exposure — even Heroku Shield, the regulated-industry offering, is still subject to US legal process.
- Object storage, cron, cookieless analytics and a SQL data workspace are built into Canner — on Heroku each is a paid add-on or a third-party service.
| Feature | Canner | Heroku |
|---|---|---|
| Data location | Montreal, Quebec — sole region | US (Virginia), EU (Dublin), Sydney |
| Canadian region | Yes (sole) | No |
| Pricing model | Flat monthly per account | Per-dyno per-month, plus add-ons |
| Cheapest path to hello-world | $0 (Starter, no card) | US$5/mo eco dyno + US$5/mo mini-Postgres |
| Free tier | Permanent Starter — unlimited projects, up to 512 MB app memory (pooled, deprioritized) | None since November 2022 |
| Managed Postgres | Included on every plan: one database per project on Starter, several on paid plans; storage is one pooled limit per organization (5 / 25 / 100 GB) | Separate paid add-on: Essential-0 listed at $5/month (1 GB), Essential-1 at $9/month (10 GB), shared RAM; no free tier † |
| Backups & point-in-time recovery | Scheduled encrypted backups with the retention you set, restore into a new database or in place, backup verification with email alerts, copies to your own buckets. Point-in-time recovery (1–35 days) with the Dedicated instance add-on ($9/mo per project) | 7 daily backups on all tiers; rollback (point-in-time) none on Essential, 4 days on Standard, 7 days on Premium and above; snapshots stored in the U.S. regardless of database location † |
| Extensions & logical replication | Dedicated instance add-on: pgvector, PostGIS, pg_trgm, pg_cron and more; logical replication out to your own subscribers, or follow an external server for a no-downtime migration | pgvector and PostGIS supported; pg_cron not listed. Followers (read replicas) on Standard and above † |
| Canadian region for the database | Montreal, Quebec — the only region, Canadian-owned | Montreal exists only in Private Spaces; the Common Runtime is US and EU † |
| Sleeping / always-warm | Live keeps 2 projects always-on (more at $4/mo each); anything else sleeps after 3 h idle | Eco dynos sleep; Basic and Standard dynos do not |
| Owner | 100% Canadian-owned | Salesforce, Inc. (NYSE: CRM) |
| CLOUD Act exposure | Not subject | Subject — Salesforce is US-incorporated |
| Currency | CAD | USD |
| Framework / runtime support | Node, Python, Go, Ruby, PHP, Rust, Java, BoxLang, static & Vite | Buildpacks for Ruby, Python, Node, Java, PHP, Go, more |
| Scheduled jobs (cron) | Built-in — prioritized on Live | Heroku Scheduler add-on |
| SQL data workspace | Built-in Data Workshop (DuckDB SQL over your files) + scheduled SQL against your Postgres | Dataclips (row store) only |
| Cookieless analytics | Built-in, cookieless — no consent banner | No built-in analytics |
| Object storage | Included — S3-style, from Starter up | Via S3 / Bucketeer add-on |
| CLI, REST API & MCP | CLI, REST API (OpenAPI 3.1) + MCP server for AI agents | CLI + Platform API; no MCP server |
† Competitor details come from each vendor's own published pages on the dates shown; prices and plans change, so check the vendor before you decide. Managed Postgres (2026-09-26) · Backups & point-in-time recovery (2026-09-26) · Extensions & logical replication (2026-09-26) · Canadian region for the database (2026-09-26)
When Canner is the right call
If your buyer's procurement form asks about CLOUD Act exposure and you can't say 'not subject', the deal stalls. Canner's structure — 100% Canadian-owned, no US entity in the supply chain — is the affirmative answer that contract reviewers in healthcare, fintech, and government actually require. The pricing edge is real too: managed Postgres is included rather than billed separately.
When Heroku still makes sense
Heroku's buildpack catalogue and add-on marketplace are still unmatched. If you run Java or Scala, or you depend on a long tail of add-ons (Redis, Elasticsearch, Memcache, and hundreds more), Heroku's ecosystem will move you faster. Organisations with an existing Salesforce or Heroku Enterprise relationship also benefit from consolidated billing and support that we can't replicate.
Ready to give it a try?
Free tier available — Starter is permanent, no card required to sign up. Cancel anytime.