A Heroku and Railway alternative: where to run projects from Russia
Heroku and Railway are handy for the same reason: you upload your code and get a link, with no fiddling with a server. But from Russia they raise more and more questions: Heroku no longer has a free plan, both charge you through a foreign bank card, the interface and support are in English, and access sometimes depends on where you connect from. For a pet project or a small service these are needless obstacles.
Netrun solves the same task — it turns your code into a live link without any infrastructure setup — but it works from Russia: the interface and support are in Russian, you pay in rubles, and no foreign bank card is needed. Let us look at how the approach is similar to Heroku and Railway and where it differs.
The same "upload code, get a link" principle
Just like on Heroku or Railway, with Netrun you do not need to rent and configure a server. You upload your code, the platform detects the language on its own, builds the project, starts it, and hands you a public HTTPS address. Knowing Docker, nginx, or SSL is not required — the platform takes care of that.
Pay in rubles, no foreign card
The main practical difference: Netrun does not need a foreign bank card. There is a Free plan and it stays free, and if you need a paid one, you pay in rubles with a Russian interface and support. That removes the main reason it is awkward to approach Heroku and Railway from Russia.
Import from GitHub or upload a ZIP
The connect-a-repository flow familiar from Railway is here too: you can import your code from GitHub, including a private repository. If you do not have a repository, you can upload the project as a ZIP archive — the result is the same.
Secrets instead of config vars
What Heroku calls config vars and Railway calls variables, Netrun calls secrets: the values of keys and tokens that are set outside your code. When you set up the project, the platform asks for them and plugs them in, so they never sit in your repository or archive, and in the database they are stored encrypted.
Listen on the port from an environment variable
Just like Heroku with its PORT variable, in Netrun the port comes from the environment rather than being hardcoded in your code. If your project was already built for Heroku or Railway, it most likely already reads the port correctly — then there is almost nothing to move.
Keep the idle behavior in mind
On the Free plan a web project sleeps when idle and wakes on the first request — the way free Heroku used to. The first response after a pause is a bit slower. If you need an always-running service with no delay, a paid plan with always-on fits, the equivalent of the paid Heroku and Railway plans.
If you liked the Heroku and Railway approach but were held back by the missing free plan, the foreign card, and the English interface — Netrun does the same thing from Russia and in Russian. Upload your project to Netrun or first compare the options in a separate breakdown Netrun, VPS, or Heroku.
Common questions
What can replace Heroku from Russia?
Netrun solves the same task — it turns your code into a public link with no server setup — but it works from Russia: you pay in rubles, the interface and support are in Russian, and no foreign bank card is needed. There is a Free plan and a paid always-on one.
Do you need a foreign bank card?
No. Unlike Railway and the paid Heroku plans, Netrun does not need a foreign card. The paid plan is paid in rubles, and the free one is available at no cost.
Can you move a project that was on Heroku or Railway?
Yes, most of the time with almost no changes. If the project already read the port from an environment variable and kept its keys in config vars or variables, you just upload it as an archive or import it from GitHub and set the same values as secrets.
Is there a free plan like Heroku used to have?
Yes. On the Netrun Free plan you can keep one project. A web project sleeps when idle and wakes on the first request, the way free Heroku used to; Telegram bots run continuously.
What about language support compared to Railway?
Netrun runs projects in Python, Node.js, Go, Rust, Ruby, PHP, Java, .NET, Deno, Bun, and Elixir, as well as static sites and your own Dockerfile and docker-compose with up to five services. The language is detected automatically.