Northflank
Ranked 7 of 7 platform as a services by recommenders
Recommended as an easier Heroku alternative that runs in your own cloud account; critics mainly cite a security breach.
Recommended as an easier Heroku alternative that runs in your own cloud account; critics mainly cite a security breach.
22 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 9
- criticize it
- 13
- approval share
- 41%
Recommended in 6 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: not recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 9 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- 0.6 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not met.
- Recommended in 6 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Users happy after switching
“I've been incredibly happy with Northflank since moving over a few years ago after Heroku got unreliable.”
Comment from 7 Feb 2026 in “An Update on Heroku” “We've been very happy with Northflank's blend of ease-of-use with configurability when you want it.”
Comment from 9 Feb 2026 in “An Update on Heroku” “We moved from Render to Northflank and couldn't be happier.”
Comment from 24 Mar 2026 in “Migrating to the EU” Easy migration from Heroku
“I've been incredibly happy with Northflank since moving over a few years ago after Heroku got unreliable.”
Comment from 7 Feb 2026 in “An Update on Heroku” “northflank supports the same buildpacks that you run on Heroku, so it should be fairly straightforward.”
Comment from 6 Feb 2026 in “An Update on Heroku”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Security breach and poor response
“I had my Anthropic key on Northflank set as an env var as-is and only found out about the incident from the HN front page 6 hours later”
Comment from 31 Oct 2026 in “Northflank Breached” “trivial cross-tenant compromises are not egregious security failures demonstrating their systems are unfit for purpose”
Comment from 30 Oct 2026 in “Northflank Breached” “Getting hacked while in the business of selling a secure sandbox isn't really a good look.”
Comment from 30 Oct 2026 in “Northflank Breached” - Comment from 30 Oct 2026 in “Northflank Breached”
- Comment from 30 Oct 2026 in “Northflank Breached”
Mocked marketing tagline
“The runtime platform for autonomous software”
Comment from 30 Oct 2026 in “Northflank Breached” “wait, not THAT autonomous software!”
Comment from 30 Oct 2026 in “Northflank Breached” “Oh, it’s 100% Claude-slop.”
Comment from 31 Oct 2026 in “Northflank Breached”
Other platform as a services people recommend
The four most recommended other platform as a services, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
See all 7 platform as a services, rankedWhat people said
22 of the 26 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“Audit logs being behind-paid-plan feature is crazy.”
“I had my Anthropic key on Northflank set as an env var as-is and only found out about the incident from the HN front page 6 hours later”
“Oh, it’s 100% Claude-slop.”
“wait, not THAT autonomous software!”
“The runtime platform for autonomous software”
“Getting hacked while in the business of selling a secure sandbox isn't really a good look.”
“trivial cross-tenant compromises are not egregious security failures demonstrating their systems are unfit for purpose”
“I'm actually pretty pissed at this now.”
“the large bug bounty program that actors like Northflank don't even operate”
“There's no amount of "nicer to use" that can replace security”
“Northflank is by far the cheapest alternative”
“We moved from Render to Northflank and couldn't be happier.”
“there's already an alternative for this”
“We've been very happy with Northflank's blend of ease-of-use with configurability when you want it.”
“For me Northflank have filled this spot.”
“I've been incredibly happy with Northflank since moving over a few years ago after Heroku got unreliable.”
“Looks like that still has downtime for a Postgres migration”
“You can import directly via a DB to DB import in the platform without involving your laptop.”
“instructions that are only applicable to a toy app”
“northflank supports the same buildpacks that you run on Heroku, so it should be fairly straightforward.”
“Northflank runs in your VPC (AWS/GCP/Azure/OCI) with the same git-push experience.”
“it's hard to go wrong using any of the cloud GPU hyperscalers”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.