Is Heroku or DigitalOcean App Platform cheaper?

DigitalOcean App Platform has the lower entry price — Heroku starts at $5/mo and DigitalOcean App Platform at $0/mo.

Does Heroku or DigitalOcean App Platform support HIPAA?

HIPAA support — Heroku: Yes; DigitalOcean App Platform: —. Confirm current scope with the vendor.

Heroku vs DigitalOcean App Platform

A sourced, side-by-side comparison for paas / app hosting. DigitalOcean App Platform has the lower entry price. Every figure links to the public page it was captured from — the vendor's own wherever the vendor publishes the number, otherwise the named public source — with the date we captured it.

DigitalOcean App Platform has the lower entry price — Heroku starts at $5/mo, DigitalOcean App Platform at $0/mo. Free tier: Heroku No, DigitalOcean App Platform Yes. HIPAA: Heroku Yes, DigitalOcean App Platform —.

As of 2026-09-03 · figures link to their source below

Side by side

Heroku

$5/mo entry

Entry price$5/mo (Eco)

Free tierNo

HIPAA (BAA)Yes

SOC 2Yes

GDPRYes

Best forHealthcare and regulated-industry apps needing BAA

DigitalOcean App Platform

$0/mo entry

Entry price$0/mo (Static Sites (Free))

Free tierYes

HIPAA (BAA)—

SOC 2Yes

GDPRYes

Best forStatic site and frontend deployments on a free tier

Sources — Heroku: heroku.com (verified 2026-09-03) · DigitalOcean App Platform: digitalocean.com (verified 2026-09-03)

Key features

Heroku: Shield tier with HIPAA/PCI BAA for healthcare apps; Fir (Kubernetes) platform alongside legacy Cedar dynos; Private Spaces with network isolation; SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001/27017/27018, PCI DSS Level 1

DigitalOcean App Platform: SOC 2 + SOC 3 certified; HIPAA workload eligibility (platform-level, BAA process not confirmed for App Platform specifically); GDPR DPA available at /legal/data-processing-agreement with SCCs; Request-based autoscaling (GA as of May 2026); Free static site hosting on global CDN with automatic HTTPS and DDoS mitigation

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