The best Canadian alternative to Heroku depends on what your app runs.
Two platforms are both Canadian-owned and run your app in Canada: Canner (Montréal, managed, Postgres included) and MapleDeploy (a Coolify server in Toronto). Fly.io and DigitalOcean have Toronto regions but are US companies. Render and Railway have no Canadian region. If you rely on worker dynos and Redis, read the workers column first.
Facts checked
What Heroku actually announced
On February 6, 2026, Heroku wrote that it is “transitioning to a sustaining engineering model focused on stability, security, reliability, and support”, with an emphasis on “maintaining quality and operational excellence rather than introducing new features” (Heroku blog).
That is not a shutdown. Credit-card customers see no change to pricing or service, and Heroku calls itself a “production-ready platform”. What changed is that Enterprise Account contracts are no longer offered to new customers, and the roadmap is frozen. If your app is happy on Heroku today, nothing forces a move this year. Teams are moving because a platform with no new features is a poor place to start something new, and, for Canadian teams, because the standard Heroku runtime has no Canadian region.
Seven alternatives, side by side
Entry prices are the cheapest option each vendor lists for an app that stays running. The US vendors print prices with a bare “$”; Render’s page says USD. Canner and MapleDeploy bill in Canadian dollars.
| Option | Canadian location | Owner | Entry price, always on | Postgres | Workers and Redis |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Canner | Montréal, the only region | Canner (Canada) | $9/mo Live, two projects always on; Starter is free but sleeps after 3 h idle | Included on every plan, in Montréal; point-in-time recovery on the $9/mo dedicated instance | One process per project and no Redis: run the job queue inside the web process |
| MapleDeploy † | Toronto, one dedicated VM per customer | Canadian private corporation | CA$45/mo (4 GB, 2 vCPU) | One click, on the same server | Yes, Redis on the same server |
| Coolify, self-hosted † | Wherever you rent the server | Open-source software you run | Free software; you pay for the server | You run it | You run it |
| Heroku † † | Montréal for Private Spaces only; the standard runtime is US and EU | Salesforce (US) | Basic dyno $7/mo | Essential-0 $5/mo | Worker dynos; Key-Value Store Mini $3/mo |
| Render † † † | None (Oregon, Ohio, Virginia, Frankfurt, Singapore) | Render (US) | US$7/mo, 512 MB | From US$6/mo; the free database expires after 30 days | Background workers from US$7; Key Value from US$10 |
| Railway † † † | None (California, Virginia, Amsterdam, Singapore) | Railway (US) | Hobby $5/mo, includes $5 of usage | Postgres template on a volume; backups and recovery you turn on | A worker is another service in the project; Redis template |
| Fly.io † † † † | Toronto (yyz) | Fly.io (US) | $3.69/mo for 512 MB at the Ashburn rate; Toronto rate not listed | Managed Postgres from $38/mo, available in Toronto | Process groups, each on its own Machines; Upstash Redis created with flyctl redis create |
| DigitalOcean App Platform † † † | Toronto (TOR) | DigitalOcean (US) | $5/mo, 512 MiB | Dev database $7/mo, not backed up by default; Managed Postgres in Toronto | Workers on the same container plans; Managed Valkey in Toronto |
† 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. MapleDeploy (2026-10-29) · Coolify, self-hosted (2026-10-29) · Heroku (2026-10-29) · Heroku (2026-10-29) · Render (2026-10-29) · Render (2026-10-29) · Render (2026-10-29) · Railway (2026-10-29) · Railway (2026-10-29) · Railway (2026-10-29) · Fly.io (2026-10-29) · Fly.io (2026-10-29) · Fly.io (2026-10-29) · Fly.io (2026-10-29) · DigitalOcean App Platform (2026-10-29) · DigitalOcean App Platform (2026-10-29) · DigitalOcean App Platform (2026-10-29)
A typical Heroku app, priced on each platform
A common Heroku shape is one web dyno, one worker dyno, a small Postgres and a small Redis. Here is the cheapest listed way to run that shape on each platform. It is a floor, not a quote: bigger databases and more memory cost more everywhere.
| Platform | Web + worker | Postgres | Redis | Monthly floor |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Heroku † | 2 × Basic dyno, $14 | Essential-0, $5 | Key-Value Store Mini, $3 | $22 |
| Render † | 2 × 512 MB instance, US$14 | 256 MB plan, US$6 | Key Value 256 MB, US$10 | US$30, on the free Hobby workspace (one seat) |
| Railway † | Billed on use: $10 per GB of RAM and $20 per vCPU, per month | Template, billed the same way plus $0.15/GB of volume | Template, billed the same way | $5 plan minimum, then usage |
| Fly.io † † | 2 × 512 MB Machine, $7.38 (Ashburn rate) | Managed Postgres Basic, $38 | Upstash fixed plan from $10, or $0.20 per 100k requests | About $55 |
| DigitalOcean App Platform † | 2 × 512 MiB container, $10 | Dev database, $7 | Managed Valkey, priced separately | $17 before Redis |
| MapleDeploy † | On your VM | On your VM | On your VM | CA$45 for the whole server |
| Canner | One process: run the jobs inside the web server | Included | Not offered | $9 Live (or free on Starter, with sleep) |
† 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. Heroku (2026-10-29) · Render (2026-10-29) · Railway (2026-10-29) · Fly.io (2026-10-29) · Fly.io (2026-10-29) · DigitalOcean App Platform (2026-10-29) · MapleDeploy (2026-10-29)
Which alternative is actually Canadian
Two questions get mixed up here: where the servers are, and who owns the company. Fly.io and DigitalOcean run in Toronto, but both are US companies, and a US provider can be ordered under the US CLOUD Act to hand over data it controls wherever that data sits. Only Canner and MapleDeploy are Canadian-owned and run in Canada.
If you handle personal information about Quebecers, location matters too. Under Law 25, sending it outside Quebec, Toronto included, calls for a privacy assessment first (section 17). Canner keeps it in Montréal; MapleDeploy, Fly.io and DigitalOcean keep it in Ontario. Our Law 25 guide covers what the assessment involves. The comparison hub has a page for each platform above.
When each one is the better pick
- Stay on Heroku if the app works, you have no Canadian requirement, and you depend on add-ons nobody else offers. Nothing in the February announcement takes your app away.
- Render if you want the closest copy of the Heroku model (web services, background workers, cron jobs, Key Value) and US or EU hosting is fine. See Canner vs Render.
- Railway if you run many small services that talk to each other, or want high-availability Postgres from the dashboard. See Canner vs Railway.
- Fly.io if you need a Toronto region and are comfortable with Machines, volumes and a CLI-first workflow. See Canner vs Fly.io.
- DigitalOcean App Platform if you want Toronto and a familiar cloud with Postgres, Valkey and object storage all in TOR1.
- MapleDeploy if you want a whole server in Toronto with Redis, MySQL or MongoDB on it, and are fine with one machine holding everything. See Canner vs MapleDeploy.
- Self-hosted Coolify if you want full control and will patch, back up and watch the server yourself.
- Canner if you want a Canadian-owned, managed host in Quebec, with Postgres included and backed up, and your jobs can run in the web process. Plans are on the pricing page.
Moving off Heroku
Heroku’s documented export is heroku pg:backups:capture followed by heroku pg:backups:download, which gives you a pg_dump file any of these hosts can restore. On Canner you can skip the file and stream the database straight across with canner db migrate-in. The step-by-step Heroku migration guide maps each Heroku feature (Procfile, release phase, Scheduler, config vars) to its Canner equivalent, and lists what does not carry over.
heroku config:get DATABASE_URL --app your-app
canner db migrate-in --from "postgres://…from the line above…"Questions
Is Heroku shutting down?
No. On February 6, 2026 Heroku moved to a “sustaining engineering model”: no new features, continued support, no change for credit-card customers. It stopped offering Enterprise Account contracts to new customers. No end date has been announced.
What is the best Canadian alternative to Heroku?
Canner and MapleDeploy are the two Canadian-owned platforms that run your app in Canada. Canner is a managed platform in Montréal with Postgres included and a free plan; MapleDeploy gives you a Coolify server in Toronto from CA$45 a month. Pick MapleDeploy if you need Redis or a separate worker; pick Canner if you want Quebec hosting and no server to manage.
Which Heroku alternatives have a Canadian region?
Canner (Montréal), MapleDeploy (Toronto), Fly.io (Toronto) and DigitalOcean App Platform (Toronto). Heroku itself has Montréal only for Private Spaces. Render and Railway have no Canadian region.
Can I run a Sidekiq worker on Canner?
Not as a second process, and Canner does not offer Redis. Rails apps can switch to GoodJob or Solid Queue and run jobs inside the web process; see background jobs.
Try your Heroku app on Canner for free.
Starter costs nothing and includes a Postgres database in Montréal. Move up to Live when you need a custom domain or an app that never sleeps.