Gateways vs Heroku

The short version: Heroku runs your application on infrastructure Heroku owns and manages. Gateways provisions and operates infrastructure inside your own AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud account, with no Kubernetes to run and no Terraform to write.

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What Heroku is good at

Heroku is the classic developer PaaS: push code, run dynos, attach add-ons, and avoid most raw infrastructure decisions. It remains useful when an opinionated application platform is exactly what the team wants.

What Gateways is good at

Gateways is for organizations that operate directly in AWS, Azure, or GCP and still want a clean product experience. It provides a visual architecture canvas, workspace and environment model, resource connections, activity, and APIs over infrastructure your team owns.

At a glance

Gateways compared with Heroku across infrastructure boundary, workflow, and best fit
Decision areaGatewaysHeroku
Infrastructure boundaryYour cloud accountsHeroku platform
Primary workflowManage cloud resources and relationshipsDeploy apps to dynos and add-ons
Best fitTeams with cloud ownership, compliance, multi-cloud, or landing zonesTeams that want simple app hosting without cloud exposure
Operational modelArchitecture canvas, resources, environments, APIsPaaS abstractions and add-on ecosystem

Choose Heroku when

  • You want an opinionated PaaS and do not need direct cloud resource ownership.
  • Your application fits a dyno and add-on model.
  • Your priority is developer simplicity over infrastructure control.

Choose Gateways when

  • Your organization requires infrastructure to run in its own AWS, Azure, or GCP accounts.
  • You need visibility into real resources: servers, databases, DNS, storage, functions, and connections.
  • Your team wants a Heroku-like level of usability while preserving cloud governance.
  • You want operators to keep direct cloud and SSH access instead of relying only on a PaaS abstraction.
  • Projects, environments, roles, activity, and APIs need to reflect your actual cloud estate.

Bottom line

Heroku is ideal when you want the platform to hide infrastructure. Gateways is ideal when infrastructure ownership is non-negotiable and the team still needs a fast, understandable way to operate it with provider-level control intact.

Other comparisons

Gateways vs VercelFrontend cloud and edge workflows vs owned cloud infrastructure.Gateways vs NetlifyComposable web platform workflows vs owned cloud infrastructure.Gateways vs RenderManaged PaaS services vs multi-cloud resource operations.Gateways vs Fly.ioGlobal app runtime vs hyperscaler resource control.Gateways vs RailwayFast developer deploys vs team-owned cloud environments.

See the full capability matrix or read the documentation.