What to choose
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 by a Russian card or SBP, 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 by a Russian card, 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 by a Russian card or SBP, 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 website sleeps when idle and wakes up on its own in a couple of seconds when someone opens it — the way free Heroku used to. The first response after a pause is a bit slower, but the site itself stays up for free for as long as you like. Bots and background scripts work differently: a website is woken by a request to its link, while a bot has no public link — it reaches out to Telegram itself, so there is nothing to wake it with. That is why on the free plan a bot or a background script runs for 24 hours and then shuts down: your code, settings, and secrets stay where they are, and a warning arrives shortly before. If you want a site with no delay or a bot with no time limit, the Pro plan runs around the clock, like 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 by a Russian card or SBP, the interface and support are in Russian, and no foreign bank card is needed. There is a free plan, and a paid Pro plan if you need round-the-clock work.
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 by a Russian card or SBP, 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, Netrun has a free plan, and you can keep one project on it. A website sleeps when idle and wakes on the first request, the way free Heroku used to, and it stays up for free for as long as you like. A bot or a background script runs for 24 hours on the free plan and then shuts down — to run it with no time limit you need the Pro plan.
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 several services at once. The language is detected automatically.