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 vendor's own page and 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 2026-06-14 · 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 2026-06-14) · DigitalOcean App Platform: digitalocean.com (verified 2026-06-14)

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

← All paas / app hosting compared · Open data