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Heroku Dynos

Lightweight containers for running apps

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Dynos: the heart of the Heroku platform

App developers rely on software abstractions to simplify development and enhance productivity. When it comes to running apps, containerization abstracts away the burden of managing hardware or virtual machines. Instead of hardware management, you deploy an app to Heroku, which packages the app’s code and dependencies into containers — lightweight, isolated environments that provide compute, memory, an OS, and an ephemeral filesystem. Containers are typically run on a shared host, yet are completely isolated from each other.

The Heroku Platform uses the container model to run and scale all Heroku apps. The containers used at Heroku are called “dynos.” Dynos are isolated, virtualized Linux containers that are designed to execute code based on a user-specified command. Your app can scale to any specified number of dynos based on its resource demands. Heroku’s container management capabilities provide you with an easy way to scale and manage the number, size, and type of dynos your app may need at any given time.

Dynos are the building blocks that power any Heroku app, from simple to sophisticated. Deploying to dynos, and relying on Heroku’s dyno management, makes it easy for you to build and run flexible, scalable apps – freeing you from managing infrastructure, so you can focus on building and running great apps.

Dyno Types

 

Eco

$5/month flat fee 1000 uptime hours shared across apps

Basic

$7/dyno per month

Standard

$25–$50/dyno per month

Performance

$250–$1500/dyno per month
 

 

 

Also available in network-isolated Private Spaces and high-compliance Shield Spaces.

What is it good for? For testing ideas or running apps that see intermittent use. Perfect for small scale projects and concepts. Enhanced visibility, performance, and availability for powering your production applications. Superior performance when it’s most critical for your super scale, high traffic apps.
RAM 512MB 512MB 512MB-1GB 2.5GB-126GB
Deploy from Git
Automated OS patching
Unified logs
Number of Process Types 2 10 Unlimited Unlimited
Always On Sleeps after 30 mins of inactivity, otherwise always on depending on your remaining monthly Eco dyno hours.
Custom Domain
Free SSL on custom domains
Automated Certificate Management on custom domains
Horizontal scaling
Preboot
Application metrics Past 24 hours, with 10 minute resolution 2 hours at 1 minute resolution,
24 hours at 10 minute resolution,
3 days with 1 hour resolution,
7 days at 2 hours resolution
Language runtime metrics
Threshold alerting
Autoscaling
Dedicated No No No Yes
Combining multiple Dyno types Cannot combine with other dyno types Cannot combine with other dyno types Can combine with Performance dynos Can combine with Performance dynos
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Learn more about how dynos work on Heroku

Buildtime: preparing code to run in a dyno

Heroku automates the build process, from the initial deploy to producing a “slug” – ready to be pushed to a dyno.

Runtime: configuring process and dyno types

Developers can optimize their app at runtime by breaking it down into different “process types” that determine what code runs in different dynos.

The dyno lifecycle

Heroku manages the dynos, and cycles dynos to maintain the health of all apps and the overall system.

Scaling apps with dynos

When an app needs to scale, Heroku makes it easy to change a dyno formation instantly.

Dynos in Heroku Private Spaces

High performance dynos in Private Spaces communicate directly with each other over a private network.

LitCharts logo featuring a red, blue, and teal vertical bar graph icon next to the text "LitCharts" in dark green.

“Heroku makes managing scale incredibly easy. When we’re getting a spike in traffic, we don’t have to spin up a bunch of new servers, we simply add more dynos.”

Mike Betten

CTO, LitCharts

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