Heroku is a popular cloud platform that makes it easy to deploy, run, and scale applications. One of the core concepts in Heroku is dynos – lightweight containers that run your application code. When you deploy an app on Heroku, it runs on dynos. Heroku offers several dyno types to suit different application needs like memory size and boot up time. A key question when running apps on Heroku is how many dynos you can use based on the account tier. Let’s take a look at dyno allowances on different Heroku plans.
Quick Summary
The number of dynos you can run on Heroku depends on the account tier you choose. Free accounts get 550 free dyno hours/month. Hobby and Professional tiers remove the hourly quota and allow running multiple always-on dynos. Performance tiers add resources and allow running more dynos based on the plan selected.
Free Dyno Allowance
All Heroku accounts, including free ones, come with a base dyno allowance of 550 free dyno hours per month. This means you can have a single dyno running 30 days x 24 hours = 720 hours. But the free quota is only 550 hours, so your dynos will sleep after 550 hours that month. The advantage of free dynos is you can run apps at no cost to evaluate Heroku or for low traffic projects.
For free accounts, Herokudefines dynos running time in “dyno hours.” 1 dyno running for 1 hour = 1 dyno hour. So with 550 free hours, you could have:
- 1 dyno running continuously for 22 days
- 2 dynos running for 11 days each
- 10 dynos running for 5.5 days each
The benefit of free dynos is you get fully managed, auto-scaling containers to host apps at no cost. The downside is the hourly quota limits long running or production workloads. Let’s look at paid dyno options next.
Hobby & Professional Dynos
Heroku Hobby and Professional tiers lift the hourly limits on dynos. With these tiers, you can have multiple always-on dynos running continuously. The dyno sizes and prices are:
| Dyno Type | Memory Size | Monthly Price |
| Hobby | 512 MB | $7/dyno |
| Professional | 1 GB | $25/dyno |
Hobby plans are best for running small side projects and lightweight apps in production. Professional dynos offer more memory for bigger apps and production workloads. Key benefits of Hobby and Professional dynos:
- No hourly limits – apps stay running 24/7
- Managed scaling with auto-scaling features
- Monitoring, logging, and alerting capabilities
- SSL certificates included
The downside is the additional monthly cost per dyno. But for serious apps, the benefits are often worth the expense.
Performance Dynos
Heroku offers several Performance tiers that add more dyno allowances and resources. These plans are intended for high-scale production apps. The dyno types and monthly prices are:
| Plan | Dynos Allowed | Price/Month |
| Performance M | 100 | $500 |
| Performance L | 250 | $1500 |
| Performance XL | 500 | $3000 |
| Performance XXL | 1000 | $6000 |
The Performance plans give you more dynos for larger scale apps. The M plan allows 100 dynos for $500/month. The XXL plan goes up to 1000 dynos for $6000/month. So app capacity grows in proportion to the pricing tier selected.
Benefits of Performance dynos:
- Remove dyno running limits
- Get more dynos for larger scale
- Improved latency and throughput
- Faster build time with Parallel Builds
The tradeoff is higher cost. But for companies running business critical apps, the benefits are significant.
Scaling Larger than 1000 Dynos
For workloads exceeding 1000 dynos, you can contact Heroku sales about Private Spaces. These provide custom deployments on Amazon EC2 optimized for large Heroku apps. This allows scaling to thousands of dynos for enterprise grade apps and traffic levels.
Conclusion
To summarize dyno allowances on Heroku:
- Free accounts: 550 free dyno hours/month
- Hobby: Unlimited web and worker dynos for $7/month each
- Professional: Unlimited web and worker dynos for $25/month each
- Performance M to XXL: 100 to 1000 dyno capacity
- Private Spaces: 1000+ dynos with custom EC2 deployments
Heroku provides flexible options to scale dynos based on your app requirements and budget. For most use cases like running personal apps or small business workloads, the free and hobby tiers will suffice. Larger enterprises can scale up to Performance XXL or contact Sales to design a custom private deployment. With this range of plans, Heroku makes it easy to get started small and seamlessly scale up as your app grows.
