Ankra vs Heroku

What changed at Heroku in 2026

Heroku made git push to deploy the way a generation of developers shipped software, and it still runs production apps today. On 6 February 2026, Heroku announced that it was “transitioning to a sustaining engineering model focused on stability, security, reliability, and support”. Enterprise Account contracts are no longer offered to new customers. Existing Enterprise contracts are honoured and may renew, and customers who pay by card see no change to pricing or service.

Heroku has not announced a shutdown, and it still ships updates. In October 2026 it launched Heroku Postgres Advanced and listed further changes, including Postgres 18 as the default, fine-grained access controls and Salesforce integrations through AppLink. Some of it, such as the AppLink and Heroku Connect updates, serves teams who build next to Salesforce.

Ankra gives you the same starting point, a repository and a live URL, on infrastructure you choose and keep.

Heroku is a supported platform, so stay while it serves you; choose Ankra when you want the same push-to-URL path on Kubernetes in your own account, with the platform work around it.

Where the app runs

Heroku’s Common Runtime has two regions, us and eu, and new apps default to the US. Private Spaces add ten regions, with Dublin, Frankfurt and London in Europe. Dynos and databases stay in the region you choose, but Heroku’s own docs say a region “does not guarantee restriction of data residency” for every Heroku service and add-on, because its control-surface APIs have no fixed location and add-on providers decide where their data lives. A Common Runtime app cannot change region without being redeployed as a new app. Private Spaces are available only for verified Heroku Teams and Heroku Enterprise.

Ankra builds Kubernetes on Hetzner, OVHcloud, UpCloud, DigitalOcean, AWS EC2 and Proxmox VE, creates EKS, GKE, AKS, DOKS, OVHcloud MKS and UpCloud UKS, or imports a cluster you already run. You pick the provider and the region, and the servers and the bill are yours. Ankra’s own control plane is hosted in the EU, in Finland. Cloud Cost estimates what the same cluster would cost on other providers, from list prices.

Shipping the code

Heroku’s flow is simple and well known: push, build with a buildpack, release, and roll back to an earlier release, code and config vars together, when needed. In a Heroku Pipeline, Review Apps run each GitHub pull request as a disposable app. The Fir generation runs on Kubernetes and builds portable OCI images with Cloud Native Buildpacks, which Heroku says can run on other OCI-compliant platforms. Fir runs in Private Spaces.

Ankra’s Applications analyse a GitHub repository and open a setup pull request with a Dockerfile, chart and pipeline. If the repository already builds and pushes its image from GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, Bitbucket Pipelines or CircleCI, Ankra deploys that image and keeps your CI. Ankra Pipelines run tests, rootless builds and Semgrep, Checkov and Trivy scans inside your own cluster, and only the image that passed the gate is published. You can promote the tested image from one environment to the next instead of rebuilding it. Ankra’s pull-request previews work on GitHub for Applications, and Ankra’s docs say not to rely on them yet because of an open bug.

Moving an app off Heroku

There is no rush, and a careful move goes one service at a time:

1. Start from the repository. Applications open a setup pull request with a Dockerfile if the repository has none. A Fir app already builds an OCI image, so the build step is familiar.
2. Bring the configuration. Heroku config vars become Kubernetes secrets in your cluster. Ankra’s secret inventory shows only digests of their values, and reading a value is audited.
3. Move the data. Restore a Heroku Postgres dump into a database you run, either from an operator in the add-on catalogue or from Ankra’s managed services, which run on your cluster and are in closed beta.
4. Switch traffic once the new deployment answers on its Ankra address.

If you also keep a Docker Compose file, ankra migrate moves it, including PostgreSQL, MySQL and MariaDB data. Ankra does not import a Heroku app directly, so the repository is the starting point.

Data, security and AI

Heroku’s data services are a real strength. Heroku Postgres starts at $5 a month, and Postgres Advanced scales to more than 200 TB with up to 13 followers. Key-Value Store, Apache Kafka and the Elements marketplace cover much of the rest. For regulated apps, Heroku’s Shield tier covers PCI DSS Level 1, HIPAA, ISO 27001, 27017 and 27018, and SOC 1, 2 and 3. Standard Private Spaces and the Common Runtime do not cover PCI or HIPAA.

With Ankra, the cluster and its data stay in your account. Stacks install any Helm chart in dependency order, and backups write to an S3-compatible bucket you own. Databases run by CloudNativePG or Percona are captured, but restoring them in place is not available yet. The Security Center ranks vulnerabilities in running workloads by CISA’s Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalogue and FIRST’s EPSS scores. Ankra’s security and compliance material is on its trust page.

Heroku offers Managed Inference and Agents, billed per token, and a remote MCP server for listing, creating and updating apps. Ankra’s assistant diagnoses failures and proposes fixes, and its writes wait for a person by default. The MCP server gives your own agents more than 500 tools. Its writes are audited, and your MCP client decides how to confirm them.

When to choose Ankra, and when to choose Heroku

Choose Ankra when you are planning a move off Heroku and want the same push-to-URL path on infrastructure you choose, including European providers and your own servers. It also fits when you want the region and the server bill in your own hands, or need the platform around the app: add-ons, security ranking, cost and backups.

Choose Heroku when

• your app is stable on Heroku and a sustaining engineering model is fine for it
• your app lives next to Salesforce and relies on Heroku Connect or AppLink
• you already hold a Heroku Enterprise contract and need Shield’s PCI and HIPAA coverage on a fully managed platform

Compare the work that remains

1. Ship the same repository. Time it from connecting the repository to a live URL.
2. Move a database. Restore a production-sized dump and note the downtime.
3. Place the data. Confirm the region, who holds the servers and where add-ons keep their data.
4. Plan the next three years. Note which features each platform is still adding.
5. Compare total cost. Heroku’s dyno prices include compute. With Ankra, add your provider’s server bill to Ankra’s fee per worker vCPU.

See Heroku’s pricing and Ankra’s pricing.

Reviewed 9 November 2026 against Heroku’s documentation and pricing. Product scope and plans can change.