# Brume vs Heroku

> Heroku is a mature PaaS with managed Postgres and SOC and ISO certifications, in sustaining engineering since February 2026. Brume is a free alpha that deploys to a VPS you own.

Alpha 0.1 · in progress. This is https://brume.dev/vs/heroku in Markdown, for agents and terminals.

|  | Brume | Heroku |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Where it runs | Your own server, one VPS in alpha 0.1 | [Dynos in 2 regions, or 10 with Private Spaces](https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/regions) |
| Who holds your data | You: your server and your S3 bucket | [Heroku, on AWS; Postgres backups in S3](https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/heroku-postgres-data-safety-and-continuous-protection) |
| Price | Free. You pay for your VPS and your bucket | [From $5/month (Eco); Basic dynos $7/month each](https://www.heroku.com/pricing) |
| Lock-in | Plain containers, no config file in your repo, a documented bucket format | [A Procfile at the repo root](https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/procfile) |
| Databases | PostgreSQL, MongoDB and Redis templates | [Postgres from $5/month, Key-Value Store, Kafka](https://www.heroku.com/pricing) |
| AI agents | A CLI and a local MCP server. Irreversible actions wait for your approval | [Local MCP server, in early development](https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/heroku-mcp-server) |
| Scaling and regions | One server, no autoscaling | [Autoscaling on Performance, Private and Shield dynos](https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/scaling) |
| Compliance | No certifications: it runs on infrastructure you pick | [SOC 1/2/3, ISO 27001; PCI, HIPAA on Shield](https://www.heroku.com/compliance) |
| License | Free and open source (FSL-1.1-ALv2, Apache 2.0 after two years) | [Closed platform; classic buildpacks are MIT](https://github.com/heroku/heroku-buildpack-nodejs) |
| Maturity | Alpha 0.1, in progress | [Sustaining engineering since February 6, 2026](https://www.heroku.com/blog/an-update-on-heroku/) |

Facts checked on November 1, 2026 in each project's official docs. "If the panel is hacked" is our reading of them. Brume is shown in its recommended modes: Cloudflare Tunnel and Tailscale.

## Where Brume is different

- Free software on your own VPS, not a monthly price per dyno.
- Postgres, MongoDB and Redis on your server, backed up encrypted to your bucket.
- Any container, with persistent volumes for your databases.

## Where Heroku is better today

- Postgres with rollback up to a week, followers and HA, run for you.
- No server to run: OS patches, routing and TLS are Heroku's job.
- A known git push workflow, pipelines and over 200 add-ons.

**Pick Heroku if…** You want git push with no server to run, managed Postgres, and PCI or HIPAA options.

**Pick Brume if…** You want git push deploys to a VPS you own, for free, and an alpha is fine.

## Install

```sh
curl -sSL https://brume.dev/install.sh | bash
```

Needs a fresh Debian or Ubuntu VPS and an S3-compatible bucket. Cloudflare and Tailscale recommended.

## Other comparisons

- [Brume vs Railway](https://brume.dev/vs/railway)
- [Brume vs Render](https://brume.dev/vs/render)
- [Brume vs Fly.io](https://brume.dev/vs/fly)
- [Brume vs Vercel](https://brume.dev/vs/vercel)

---

## More from brume.dev

Every page in Markdown. The whole site in one file: https://brume.dev/llms-full.txt. The index: https://brume.dev/llms.txt

- [Home](https://brume.dev/index.md)
- [Architecture](https://brume.dev/architecture/index.md)
- [Roadmap](https://brume.dev/roadmap/index.md)
- [Compare](https://brume.dev/vs/index.md)
- Brume vs [Coolify](https://brume.dev/vs/coolify/index.md), [Dokploy](https://brume.dev/vs/dokploy/index.md), [CapRover](https://brume.dev/vs/caprover/index.md), [Portainer](https://brume.dev/vs/portainer/index.md), [Kamal](https://brume.dev/vs/kamal/index.md), [Dokku](https://brume.dev/vs/dokku/index.md), [Easypanel](https://brume.dev/vs/easypanel/index.md), [Railway](https://brume.dev/vs/railway/index.md), [Render](https://brume.dev/vs/render/index.md), [Fly.io](https://brume.dev/vs/fly/index.md), [Vercel](https://brume.dev/vs/vercel/index.md), [Heroku](https://brume.dev/vs/heroku/index.md)