Comparisons
Alternatives to Heroku, Qovery & Vercel
Moving off a hosted PaaS? SeaGit is a Kubernetes platform that deploys into your own AWS account. Each comparison below lists where the other tool is the better fit, where SeaGit is, what SeaGit does not do yet, and the steps to move over.
SeaGit vs Qovery
A developer platform that deploys apps into your own cloud account.
Qovery alternative comparison, with migration steps →SeaGit vs Porter
A Kubernetes-powered PaaS that runs in your own cloud account.
Porter alternative comparison, with migration steps →SeaGit vs Northflank
A developer platform with a bring-your-own-cloud (BYOC) option.
Northflank alternative comparison, with migration steps →SeaGit vs Heroku
A fully-managed PaaS that runs on Heroku-owned infrastructure.
Heroku alternative comparison, with migration steps →SeaGit vs Vercel
A frontend cloud for Next.js and serverless, running on Vercel-owned infrastructure.
Vercel alternative comparison, with migration steps →SeaGit vs Railway
A usage-based PaaS that deploys apps and databases on Railway-managed infrastructure.
Railway alternative comparison, with migration steps →SeaGit vs Render
A managed cloud PaaS that runs web services and databases on Render-owned infrastructure.
Render alternative comparison, with migration steps →At a glance
The questions that separate these platforms fastest, including what each one charges. Every value below is taken from the detailed comparison it links to, and each of those records the date it was checked against the vendor’s own documentation. Prices are published list prices and are shown only for platforms that, like SeaGit, run in your own cloud; hosted platforms bundle compute into their price. SeaGit also has a $0 Free plan.
| Platform | Runs in your own cloud account (BYOC) | Fully-managed Kubernetes clusters | Free plan | Ephemeral / preview deployments | Entry paid plan (list price) | Compute billed by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SeaGit | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | $89.99/seat/mo | AWS, at cost |
| Qovery | Yes | App layer | 14-day trial | Yes | $299/mo (3 users, 1 cluster) | Your cloud, at cost |
| Porter | Yes | Yes | None listed | Yes | $13/vCPU + $6/GB RAM per mo | Your cloud, at cost |
| Northflank | BYOC tier | Yes | Yes | Yes | Pay as you go | Northflank, or your cloud on BYOC |
| Heroku | No | No | No | Review apps | — | — |
| Vercel | No | No | Hobby | Preview URLs | — | — |
| Railway | No | No | Trial credits | PR environments | — | — |
| Render | No | No | Yes | Preview envs | — | — |
Data science & AI stacks, side by side
SeaGit deploys each of these from one form into your own AWS account, and they connect to each other: notebooks, the RAG stack and the LLM gateway log to MLflow, and the Evals stack scores a release before it reaches users. Green marks a platform that offers a comparable template or service; “Build it yourself” means you assemble it from containers. Checked against each vendor’s own template catalogue in October 2026.
| Stack | SeaGit | Qovery | Porter | Northflank | Heroku | Vercel | Railway | Render |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| RAG stack template | Yes | Build it yourself | Build it yourself | Build it yourself | Build it yourself | Build it yourself | Build it yourself | Example templates (hosted) |
| LLM gateway template (LiteLLM) | Yes | Build it yourself | Build it yourself | LiteLLM template | Managed Inference (hosted) | AI Gateway (hosted) | Community template | Build it yourself |
| Notebooks stack (JupyterHub) | Yes | Build it yourself | Build it yourself | Jupyter, single-user | No | No | Community template | Build it yourself |
| MLflow stack (experiments & tracing) | Yes | Build it yourself | Build it yourself | Build it yourself | Build it yourself | No | Community template | Build it yourself |
| Evals stack (LLM & RAG evaluation) | Yes | Build it yourself | Build it yourself | Langfuse template | Build it yourself | Build it yourself | Community Langfuse, promptfoo | Langfuse template |
| Releases gated on evaluation scores | Yes | No | No | No | No | No | No | No |
| Prompt versions released through the evaluation gate | Yes | Build it yourself | Build it yourself | Langfuse prompt management, no gate | Build it yourself | Build it yourself | Community Langfuse, no gate | Langfuse prompt management, no gate |
| Auth Proxy stack (SSO for internal tools) | Yes | Build it yourself | Build it yourself | Build it yourself | Build it yourself | Deployment Protection (Vercel apps) | Community oauth2-proxy | Build it yourself |
| Database stack template | Yes | Blueprint | RDS / Aurora datastore | Addon with backups | Heroku Postgres (hosted) | Marketplace (Neon, Supabase) | Postgres (hosted) | Render Postgres (hosted) |
| Redis stack template | Yes | Blueprint | ElastiCache datastore | Redis addon | Key-Value Store (hosted) | Marketplace (Upstash) | Redis (hosted) | Key Value, Valkey (hosted) |
How to choose between them
Start with who owns the infrastructure. This is the decision everything else follows from. A hosted platform runs your apps on hardware it owns and bills you for compute with its margin included; a bring-your-own-cloud platform provisions into your account, so you pay AWS directly and keep the cluster when you leave. The first is simpler to start. The second is what you want if compute cost grows with usage, if data residency is a requirement, or if you need a cloud service the platform does not resell.
Then ask whether you get Kubernetes, or an app runtime. Several platforms here run containers without exposing a cluster. That is a genuine advantage when nobody on the team wants to think about Kubernetes — and a hard limit the day you need a CRD, a custom operator, a DaemonSet, or an add-on the platform has not packaged. Ask what happens when you need something the abstraction does not cover.
Check what a preview environment actually is. Most platforms offer one, and they are not the same thing. Some give you a container on shared infrastructure; some give you real infrastructure in the same account as production. The difference matters when a bug only reproduces against the real network, the real IAM roles or the real data store.
Finally, look at where the free plan ends. A free tier tells you what the vendor treats as evaluation and what it treats as revenue. Heroku removed its free dyno tier in November 2022; others gate on build minutes, seats, or the number of environments. The useful question is not whether a free plan exists but which limit you hit first, and what it costs to pass it.
Each comparison below answers these four for one platform, states where that platform is the better choice, and records the date its claims were checked.
Choosing a deployment platform — FAQ
What is the best Heroku alternative that runs Kubernetes?
- SeaGit is a Kubernetes DevOps platform that deploys into your own AWS account with a Heroku-style push-to-deploy experience, a free plan, preview deployments and GitOps CI/CD. See the SeaGit vs Heroku comparison for details.
Which platforms deploy into my own cloud account?
- SeaGit, Qovery, Porter and Northflank (on its BYOC tier) all deploy into your own cloud account rather than reselling compute. Heroku runs on its own infrastructure. SeaGit additionally manages the full Kubernetes cluster — node groups, add-ons and multi-cluster deployments.
Which of these platforms offer data science and AI stacks?
- SeaGit deploys a RAG stack, an LLM gateway, multi-user notebooks, MLflow, an Evals stack and an SSO Auth Proxy into your own AWS account on paid plans, and can block a release whose evaluation scores drop, including a new version of a RAG stack prompt. Northflank, Render and Railway offer some of these as templates, such as LiteLLM, Langfuse (which has prompt management), Jupyter and, on Railway, community MLflow; as of October 2026 none of them gates a release or a prompt change on evaluation scores.
Does SeaGit have a free plan?
- Yes. SeaGit’s free plan includes one Kubernetes cluster, one environment and 100 deployments per month. Because it is bring-your-own-cloud, you only pay your own cloud provider for the underlying compute.