TL;DR verdict: Use Heroku when buildpacks, add-ons, and a decade of operational knowledge still serve a stable app. Use AgentCell when the workload is many occasionally-used internal tools: Heroku’s per-app fees ($5/mo Eco and up) charge rent on every tool whether anyone opens it or not.
Where Heroku wins (honestly)
- Buildpacks.
git pushand it builds — the workflow every PaaS since has imitated, still smooth. - Add-ons. Postgres, Redis, logging, monitoring: one marketplace, attached in a command.
- Known quantity. A decade of runbooks, Stack Overflow answers, and teams that can operate it blindfolded.
Nobody should migrate a stable, working Heroku app on principle. This page is about where the next twenty tools go.
The per-app tax
Heroku killed its free tier in November 2022. Eco starts at $5/mo per app — and that is the floor, before databases, before anything beyond one tiny dyno. Twenty internal tools, seventeen of them asleep, still cost twenty app-fees. That arithmetic is precisely what makes teams prune: every experiment carries rent, so experiments stop. Add Salesforce’s “sustaining engineering” (maintenance) status as of February 2026, and the platform is charging growing rent on a shrinking roadmap.
AgentCell inverts the unit: unlimited cells, no per-app fee, idle cells bill nothing for compute. The twentieth experiment costs nothing to keep.
The missing half (same as everywhere)
Heroku is auth-agnostic: the app is public unless your code says otherwise. Internal tools need the same second vendor and second bill (WorkOS/Clerk/Auth0 with their $125–300/mo enterprise floors), plus session logic maintained across every tool. Heroku’s add-on ecosystem never included “let three colleagues log in with Google” — because that was never a Heroku-shaped problem.
Side-by-side
| Heroku | AgentCell | |
|---|---|---|
| Deploy flow | git push, buildpacks | agentcell deploy from a folder, no git required: static sites detected, servers from a Dockerfile |
| Cost per idle app | $5+/mo Eco per app | ~Nothing for idle compute |
| Twenty idle tools | ~$100+/mo rent | Storage/domains only, capped |
| Data | Add-on Postgres/Redis (mature) | Per-cell datastore + object storage (small-tools scope) |
| Share with colleagues | DIY auth in every app | Share list + identity-aware front door |
| Trajectory | Maintenance mode (Salesforce, Feb 2026) | Independent vendor, small software only |
| Best for | Stable existing apps, steady traffic | Many occasional tools, 1–10 users each |
Fit checklist
Use AgentCell when: new tools outnumber stable ones; per-app rent exceeds each tool’s value; sharing needs named people, not public URLs.
Stay on Heroku when: the app is stable, trafficked, and paid for; buildpacks/add-ons are load-bearing; the team already operates it well.
FAQ
Is this another ‘Heroku killer’ pitch? No — Heroku’s maintenance-mode status does that work itself. We’re the home for what gets built next, not a re-platforming crusade.
Can agents deploy to AgentCell like git push to Heroku? Closer: no git repo required. The agent deploys from the working folder via CLI or MCP tool call, in the session where the code was written.
Paying rent on apps nobody opens? Deploy now.