Heroku Is Gone: We Re-Ran Encore's Exit Map With Real Bills for Render, Railway, Fly.io, and Hetzner
Encore's Heroku exit map points refugees at Render, Railway, Fly.io, and a VPS. A line-by-line re-audit prices the same stack on each — quiet month and traffic-spike month — and finds the meter shape matters more than the headline number.
Heroku's Fir Can't Deploy Your Dockerfile: a Migration Playbook With Real Before-and-After Bills
Heroku's Fir generation can't deploy Docker images and Cedar entered sustaining mode in February 2026. A migration playbook for container teams: what breaks on Fir, how Render, Railway, and Fly.io handle Dockerfiles, and one typical stack priced five ways — $87 on Heroku, ~$35–60 hosted, ~$7 self-hosted.
From $87 in Heroku Dynos to $7 on Hetzner: a Real 2026 Migration Bill, Line by Line
A line-by-line recompute of a Node.js API plus worker plus Postgres on Heroku Standard dynos ($87/month) versus the same containers on a Hetzner CX23 (~$7/month) at September 2026 prices, with honest egress math, a hobby-to-growing-prod sensitivity ladder, and where Heroku's zero-ops premium still wins.
Leapcell's Serverless Escape Hatch: the Traffic Level Where Per-Millisecond Billing Stops Being Cheaper
Leapcell bills serverless per millisecond but lets any service flip to fixed persistent-server pricing. A worked bill across three traffic profiles puts the crossover near one million 60-ms requests a month — and shows how response time moves it 10x.
The 5x PaaS Pricing Spread: What One API + Worker + Postgres Costs on Railway, Render, Fly.io, Vercel — and a Flat Hetzner Box
A line-by-line recompute of the same API, worker, and Postgres workload across Railway, Render, Fly.io, and Vercel rate cards — plus egress sensitivity to 2 TB, cold-start math, and the flat Hetzner number the whole spread collapses to.
Upsun Bills You Four Times for One App: What a Typical API + Postgres + Redis Stack Really Costs vs. a €4 Hetzner Box
A line-by-line recompute of a typical API plus Postgres plus Redis stack on Upsun's four-dimension meter versus the same containers on a flat Hetzner CX22, with preview-environment sensitivity math and an honest read on what per-app cloud choice is worth.
Fly.io Started Billing What Used to Be Free: The Two 2026 Line Items, Priced
Fly.io began metering volume snapshots in January 2026 and cross-region private traffic in February 2026. A line-by-line recompute shows the two new charges adding roughly $9 to a $33 three-region bill, against $15 flat on owned Hetzner hardware.
Railway vs Render vs Fly.io, Re-Priced: Where the 5x Bill Spread Actually Comes From
Railway (~$37), Render (~$30), and Fly.io (~$12) bill the same Node.js-plus-Postgres stack three different ways at July 2026 prices, and the gap stretches to ~5x once egress grows. A line-by-line recompute of compute, database, volume, and egress charges, the $0.02-vs-$0.12 regional premium, and what the stack collapses to on a flat $5 Hetzner box.
Fly.io's Bill Is Now Six Meters With a 2-Hour Preview: Pricing the Predictability Cost Against One Flat Hetzner Box
Fly.io metered volume snapshots in January 2026 and Managed Postgres inter-region traffic in February, while new accounts get a 2-hour trial. A worked six-line monthly bill for a typical small app — quiet month vs busy month — against one flat Hetzner CX22 with backups.