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
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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 |
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Also available in network-isolated Private Spaces and high-compliance Shield Spaces. |
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| 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 |
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| 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 |
| Sign Up Now | Learn More about Dyno Types | |||
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.
“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.”
Ready to Get Started?
Stay focused on building great data-driven applications and let Heroku tackle the rest.