Google App Engine vs Heroku comparison

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Google App Engine

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 15, 2024

Google App Engine and Heroku are competing cloud platform services, each offering distinct advantages. Google App Engine holds the upper hand in scalability and seamless integration with other Google Cloud services, making it a strong contender for enterprises embedded in the Google ecosystem. Heroku shines with its simplicity and developer-friendly interface, making it a popular choice among smaller teams for its ease of use.

Features: Google App Engine offers robust scalability, automatically managing resources with its pay-as-you-go model. It supports multiple languages such as Python, Java, and Node.js. A key advantage is its integration with various Google Cloud services, providing a comprehensive cloud solution. Heroku's value lies in its simple deployment process and extensive add-on ecosystem, making it easily extendable. Its continuous integration and application deployment features are highly praised, particularly for Node.js and Ruby on Rails environments.

Room for Improvement: Google App Engine could enhance user experience with a more intuitive deployment process and reduce complexities in configuration. Increasing flexibility, such as offering equivalent services for different app needs, would be beneficial. Heroku, while easy to use, may suffer from higher costs at scale; optimizing costs for larger deployments would be advantageous. Its free tier limitations and add-on pricing could be areas for reevaluation.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Heroku provides an intuitive deployment process using Git, supporting CI/CD workflows with straightforward rollback capabilities and accessible documentation. Its customer service efficiently supports smaller organizations. Google App Engine's deployment process is more complex but offers powerful customizations. It provides enterprise-level customer support with comprehensive SLA options.

Pricing and ROI: Google App Engine offers flexible pricing suited for scalable applications with sustained discounts for long-running services. Heroku uses dyno hour-based pricing with clear tiered options. Though Heroku can incur higher costs at scale, its ease of use may justify the expense for rapid development. Google App Engine provides better ROI for companies leveraging extensive cloud services and requiring scalability.

To learn more, read our detailed Google App Engine vs. Heroku Report (Updated: December 2025).

Google App Engine vs. Heroku

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Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Categories and Ranking

Google App Engine

Ranking in PaaS Clouds

6th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

6.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Heroku

Ranking in PaaS Clouds

12th

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the PaaS Clouds category, the mindshare of Google App Engine is 2.4%, up from 2.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Heroku is 3.5%, up from 2.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

PaaS Clouds Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Google App Engine	2.4%
Heroku	3.5%
Other	94.1%

PaaS Clouds

Featured Reviews

Rajesh Kadyan

Senior Engineer at Brillio

Have managed resources seamlessly thanks to robust platform capabilities

The areas of Google App Engine that I would to improve or enhance include its allowance for complete end-to-end deployment and scalability; however, it is manageable only for a few languages. For instance, it doesn't support languages C and C++, only basic support for Node.js, Java, and Ruby. It's not a comprehensive solution for all scenarios. Moreover, the security feature is based on IAM roles, but it should ideally be based on Active Directory (AD) roles. For IAM-based roles, we need to add the proper users and provide all security permissions manually. In an AD-based model, we would simply add users to a specific group, and all permissions would be inherited.

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Faizan Haider

Senior Software Engineer at Aldaim Solutions

Used for server deployment and provides auto maintenance of databases

Heroku is deployed on the cloud. We can deploy our private and public projects over at Heroku. Most of the time, when we are starting any new project from scratch, we have to implement our MVP for that project or the core idea. We are unsure how our traffic flow will go or the actual production environment requirements. We don't want to spend the most on the server sites, so then we can use it with our go-to plan for Heroku, and all the resources are available in the basic plan with the minimum expenses. So, it helps us to deploy and make our features available online at the minimum cost. Once we know our needs, we can add the professional add-ons and shift it to another platform. Heroku supports any resource listed in the marketplace. We just have to deploy our AI solutions, and Heroku can also support AI projects. I would recommend the solution to other users. I advise users not to purchase extra add-ons but to make scalable resources so that they can use all the resources efficiently. Overall, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.

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Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"I've found that all of the features are valuable, especially the shared drive and the ability for multiple people to use their documents at the same time."

"What I appreciate most about Google App Engine is that the deployment is significantly easier compared to a conventional Linux platform."

"The solution is serverless, so we don't have to operate it."

"Administering App Engine is simple; it has intuitive UIs and a very scalable app engine."

"The auto-scaling feature helped us significantly in our fast-paced environment where the number of users was increasing rapidly."

"It is simple to use. It is much simpler than AWS. It is also very powerful."

"Its ability to integrate with most devices helps users who have different or old devices."

"The WhatApp feature is the most valuable."

More Google App Engine pros

"I like the tool's scalability, CLI, and dashboards."

"Thanks to Heroku, we don't need to do as much direct management in AWS."

"It's easy to push a change and to deploy new things."

"One of the best things about Heroku is that it is very easy and straightforward to deploy an application."

"Valuable for us was the fast deployment. This means the time to market is improved without pain for developers."

"The platform is very Node.js-friendly, which is something that is important to us."

"It is easy to deploy applications, and we don't need to bother about software updates on the server. We don't need to bother about machines, servers, and hardware. We only need to care about the system and functionality that we need or want to develop. They take care of everything else. It provides high availability. It is a pretty good solution that provides everything that we need. It has everything that we need to run our applications. We have many different applications, and we generate three million bills for a company in Brazil. We see more than a billion requests per day in another application. Everything works just fine, and it is very good."

"The product is stable."

More Heroku pros

Cons

"One drawback is that the app needs to be written to be compatible with Google App Engine, making it not cloud agnostic, hindering straightforward migration to other platforms such as AWS."

"The areas of Google App Engine that I would to improve or enhance include its allowance for complete end-to-end deployment and scalability; however, it is manageable only for a few languages."

"I am limited to sending a photo to five people. I want to be able to send a photo to many people, not just five."

"The interface and IDE, where I write code, could be improved. Unlike other IDEs like Visual Studio, it lacks easy access to available functions."

"There is limited customization because the sandbox environment restricts it."

"Some clients don't use it because Google is very unstable with their products. Google has terminated many promising products in the past, and some clients have stated, 'This is from Google, we don't trust it because Google can change their mind any day.'"

"The main drawback with Google App Engine's standard environment was its restrictions. We could not work with file systems, run shell scripts from the environment, or use WebSockets."

"There are two versions of Google App Engine: flexible and standard versions. I think they can improve by having only one version."

More Google App Engine cons

"They could flesh out some of their analytics a little more."

"Their support is good, but they can improve their response time."

"Heroku had an authentication problem a few months ago, but they solved it."

"We don't find the pipelines intuitive. The user experience could be better. Having to set up multiple apps, then a pipeline, seems like an overkill on the amount of work to do."

"I improved the application performance by monitoring and adjusting the cleaner configuration to help set better lightweight limits on containers that run the app instances."

"The pricing could be improved because scaling the database becomes costly."

"We would like to be notified when something goes wrong in the process. When something is not working, we should get an alert."

"I think this solution would be improved if free demos were available indefinitely."

More Heroku cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We pay the license yearly. It's about $6 a month, which is $72 a year per person, so it's about $500."

"If we don't know how to work with the tool, we might have some spikes in price."

"I would like to have more free application with it. Some of the applications, I am paying more for them. I think that they must be free."

"The tool is free."

"The price of Heroku could be less expensive."

"There is a standard fee for a processing unit, they call them "dynos," and then you pay for add-ons."

"I rate the tool's pricing a three out of ten."

"Its price is very good."

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Comparison Review

it_user8586

Engineer at a tech consulting company with 51-200 employees

Aug 14, 2013

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

12%

University

Educational Organization

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

12%

Computer Software Company

11%

Educational Organization

Comms Service Provider

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	15
Midsize Enterprise	7
Large Enterprise	13

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	23
Midsize Enterprise	2
Large Enterprise	3

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Google App Engine?

The product's setup and deployment phases are easy.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Google App Engine?

I believe it is reasonably priced. I've never heard anyone express that the licenses are too expensive.

What needs improvement with Google App Engine?

The error logging system in Google App Engine could be enhanced. While there are troubleshooting documents with Google-defined error logs, identifying the exact root cause can be challenging. Often...

What do you like most about Heroku?

I like the tool's scalability, CLI, and dashboards.

What needs improvement with Heroku?

I don't like that the web server crashes every day, every 24 hours. The pricing could be improved because scaling the database becomes costly. The Docker features are not great. You cannot use any ...

What is your primary use case for Heroku?

We use the solution for web applications and web APIs.

Microsoft Azure vs Google App Engine

Comparisons

Compared 22% of the time

Amazon AWS vs Google App Engine

Compared 19% of the time

VMware Tanzu Platform vs Google App Engine

Compared 9% of the time

Amazon Lightsail vs Google App Engine

Compared 7% of the time

Acquia Cloud vs Google App Engine

Compared 5% of the time

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Amazon AWS vs Heroku

Compared 15% of the time

Microsoft Azure vs Heroku

Compared 14% of the time

Render vs Heroku

Compared 11% of the time

AWS Fargate vs Heroku

Compared 8% of the time

Pivotal Cloud Foundry vs Heroku

Compared 7% of the time

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Product Reports

Google App Engine

Download Google App Engine product report

Download Heroku product report

Overview

Google App Engine is a Platform-as-a-Service (Paas) provider that equips web application developers with all the resources and tools that they need to develop, test, and run their applications on Google's infrastructure. Everything is built into the kit, so with one download of the SDK, you'll be well on your way to first-rate apps.

Google

Established in 2007, Heroku is a cloud application platform providing a streamlined, efficient place for web app developers to create and deploy their applications. Heroku is designed to maximize developer productivity. With the entire web application development process available on the Herokucloud, creating and rolling out web apps has been made more efficient, convenient, and cost-effective than ever before.

Sample Customers

Khan Academy, Best Buy, Gigya, MetOffice, Getaround, Mimiboard, NewsLimited, WebFilings, and CloudLock.

Facebook, UrbanDictionary, Code for America, Mailchimp, Rapportive, GitHub, TED, and Lyft.

Google App Engine vs. Heroku