Encore Cloud vs Heroku
See why thousands of developers choose Encore Cloud's developer-first cloud platform over other solutions
"We've run Encore in production for over 2 years and I honestly don't know how we'd have accomplished as much without it. I don't miss spending days writing Terraform, deploying and managing message queues, and about a dozen other things that Encore took of our plates."
— Mason Stewart, CTO of Bookshop.org
Development Approach
Encore Cloud
Full backend development platform with microservices support- Infrastructure from Code approach
- Event-driven architecture support
- Kubernetes and custom infrastructure support
- Type-safe infrastructure definitions
Heroku
Limited Platform-as-a-Service approach- Rigid infrastructure model
- Limited event-driven capabilities
- No Kubernetes or custom infrastructure support
- No type-safe infrastructure definitions
Infrastructure control
Full backend development platform vs Platform-as-a-Service
Encore Cloud gives you complete control over your backend architecture while maintaining the simplicity of a managed platform. Unlike traditional PaaS solutions, you're never limited by the platform's capabilities.
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Developer Experience
Encore Cloud
- Integrated development workflow from local to cloud
- Automatic API documentation and OpenAPI specs
- Built-in service discovery and type-safe APIs
- Local development with cloud parity
- AI-powered development assistance
Heroku
- Basic deployment platform
- Manual API documentation
- Manual service configuration
- No AI development tools
Faster development
Modern Development Experience vs Traditional PaaS
Encore provides a modern, integrated development experience with built-in best practices, while Heroku offers a more traditional PaaS approach.
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Infrastructure & Deployment
Encore Cloud
- Automatic deployment to your cloud on AWS or GCP
- Automatic infrastructure provisioning
- Advanced secrets management
- Preview environments
Heroku
- Basic config vars
- Review apps
- Basic deployment pipeline
- Heroku-managed infrastructure only
- Manual add-on configuration
Less DevOps overhead
Cloud-Native Infrastructure vs Traditional PaaS
Deploy to your own cloud with zero configuration while maintaining complete control over your infrastructure and costs.
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Scalability & Performance
Encore Cloud
- Independent service scaling
- Global distribution support
- Automatic load balancing
- Distributed tracing built-in
- Automatic performance monitoring
Heroku
- Basic load balancing
- Manual dyno scaling
- Limited regional availability
- Third-party monitoring required
- Limited performance insights
Scalability
Enterprise-Ready Scale from Day One
Build with confidence knowing your application can scale from prototype to enterprise without architecture changes.
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