Porter vs Qovery (2026): which should you pick?
As of Nov 13, 2026, Qovery grades higher than Porter: 2.0 against 1.6 out of 4.0.
Checked Nov 13, 2026 · graded Nov 13, 2026 by ToolGPA
Porter grades higher on ease of use. Qovery grades higher on the free plan. They get the same grade on value for money, features and platforms.
Price, platforms and features side by side. The table says where each price was read and when.
Qovery
Self-service deployment onto your own cloud or Kubernetes
Which one is for you
Pick Porter if
- Fits if you want Heroku-style deploys on your own cloud account
- Works for startups moving off Heroku
Look elsewhere if
- Pricey if you add it up: the fee comes on top of your cloud provider's bill
- Skip it if you want a free tier, as none is listed
- Tight if you need SSO, advanced roles or volume discounts, which need Enterprise and a sales call
- Watch out: billing is on requested resources, not cloud instance capacity
Pick Qovery if
- Fits if you want a deploy layer over your own cloud account
- Works for engineering teams that manage Kubernetes
Look elsewhere if
- Pricey if you are a small team, as Starter is $299 a month billed yearly
- Watch out: extra deployment minutes cost $0.16 each beyond the allowance
- Skip it if you want Qovery to host the workloads, as the cloud bill is separate
- Tight if you need SSO, a HIPAA add-on or more clusters, which cost extra
How we grade them
| 1.6GPAPorterWeak | 2.0GPAQoveryFair | |
|---|---|---|
| Value for money | D$6 per GB of RAM and $13 per vCPU a month, so 1 vCPU with 2 GB is $25 before the cloud bill, above the ordinary range. | DStarter is $299 a month billed yearly, far above the $35 start of the dearest tenth, and your cloud bill is separate. |
| Free plan and trial | FNo free plan and no trial on record, so you pay from the start. | BFree plan with 3 users, 1 cluster you run yourself and 1,000 deployment minutes a month, with no time limit. |
| Features | CGitHub deploys, autoscaling, monitoring, logs, alerts and a Heroku migration path. It relies on a cloud account you supply. | CDeploys to your own cloud, a service catalog, preview environments, CI/CD and Terraform. It hosts nothing itself, so the compute bill is separate. |
| Ease of use | CYou connect a cloud account and configure apps, with no store rating. | DYou connect a Kubernetes cluster and cloud account, which is a lot of setup. |
| Platforms and integrations | BWeb dashboard with a few integrations, built on GitHub. | BWeb console with Terraform and agent tooling, plus several integrations. |
| Best for | Heroku-style deploys on your own cloud | deploying onto your own cloud account |
The GPA is the average of the five grades: an A is 4 points, an F is none. The full reasons are on each tool's page: Porter and Qovery. How we grade
Price against what you get
Porter starts at $13 a month and scores 2.3 out of 4 on features, ease of use and platforms. Qovery starts at $299 a month and scores 2.0.
Porter scores higher and starts $286 a month lower. Of the other web hosts on the chart, 4 score higher than Porter for less, and 59 score higher than Qovery for less.
Features, ease of use and platforms, averaged
What paid plans start at, a month (each step along is roughly double) →
- The best score at each price
- Has a free plan
- No free plan
Where they differ
- Porter also covers workflow automation and job scheduling.
- Qovery also covers databases.
At a glance
| Porter | Qovery | |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing | Paid | Free plan |
| Starts at | Metered: $6 per GB of RAM and $13 per vCPU, per month, plus your cloud bill | $299 per month on Starter, billed yearly |
| Free plan | None | 3 users plus unlimited AI agents, 1 Kubernetes cluster you run yourself, and 1,000 deployment minutes a month, with no time limit. |
| Free trial | None listed | 14-day free trial of Starter, Growth and Scale, no credit card required. |
| Web | ||
| Made by | Porter | Qovery |
| Price read from | porter.run | qovery.com |
| Checked | Nov 13, 2026 | Nov 13, 2026 |
Worth knowing
Porter
- Porter's metered fee does not include the underlying AWS, Azure or Google Cloud cost, which is billed separately by the provider.
- Rates are $6 per GB of RAM and $13 per vCPU a month, billed on requested resources rather than cloud instance capacity.
- Volume discounts, SSO and advanced roles are Enterprise features that require talking to sales.
- The pricing FAQ mentions startup deals through some accelerators and investors, and a 50% discount for non-profits.
Qovery
- Qovery does not host workloads itself in the way a shared host does: the cloud provider's compute bill is separate from the plan price.
- Deployment time beyond the included minutes costs $0.16 per minute on Starter, Growth and Scale.
- Paid plans are quoted as billed yearly; the page shows a 20% yearly saving but no monthly-billed prices.
- SSO is an add-on on Growth and Scale, a HIPAA add-on on Scale is listed at $5,880 per year, and each extra cluster on Scale is $399 a month.
Key features
Porter
- Your own cloud account
- Applications run in your AWS, Azure or Google Cloud account, and the servers keep running if you stop paying Porter, according to the pricing FAQ.
- Deploy from GitHub
- Unlimited applications can be deployed from GitHub with preview environments, jobs and cron jobs.
- Autoscaling
- Applications autoscale, including custom autoscaling rules.
- Monitoring, logging and alerts
- Monitoring, logging and alerting are part of the Standard offering, along with certificate management.
- Heroku migration path
- The site has a dedicated guide for moving apps off Heroku.
- Enterprise controls
- Advanced role-based access control, SAML-based SSO and on-premise installation are offered on the Enterprise tier.
Qovery
- Deploy to your own cloud
- Applications deploy to your AWS, GCP, Azure or Scaleway account, or to an existing Kubernetes cluster such as EKS, GKE, AKS or k3s.
- Service catalog
- Applications, databases, Helm charts and Terraform modules are deployed together as one environment.
- Preview environments
- Temporary environments are created for pull requests, and environments can be cloned.
- Built-in CI/CD
- Builds and deployments run on Qovery-provided resources, with one-click rollbacks.
- AI and agent tooling
- A Copilot reads logs and events to explain failed deployments, and Claude Code, Cursor or Codex can deploy through MCP, CLI and skills.
- Terraform provider
- Qovery resources can be managed with a Terraform provider.
Plans
Porter
StandardCustom
Pay as you go for requested app resources: $6 per GB RAM and $13 per vCPU per month ($0.009 and $0.019 per hour). Unlimited apps, preview environments, autoscaling and cron jobs.
EnterpriseCustom
Volume discounts above 40 vCPU or 80 GB RAM, premium support, advanced RBAC, SAML SSO, custom alerts and on-prem installation. Sold through sales.
Qovery
Free$0
3 users, 1 of your own Kubernetes clusters (1.31 or later), 1,000 deployment minutes a month, preview environments, and community support.
Starter$299
per month, billed yearly
3 users, 1 cluster (yours or managed by Qovery), 3,000 deployment minutes a month, 7-day log retention and standard support in Slack or Teams.
Growth$899
per month, billed yearly
10 users, 2 clusters, 8,000 deployment minutes a month, the Observe package on 1 cluster and 15-day log and audit retention.
Scale$2,999
per month, billed yearly
Up to 25 users, 3 clusters, 30,000 deployment minutes a month, a SOC 2 Type II report, a HIPAA add-on and priority support.
EnterpriseCustom
Self-hosted control plane, SSO, unlimited custom roles, compliance packages and premium support. Annual billing only.
Ways to pay less
Porter
- Nonprofit
50% discount for non-profits
The pricing FAQ states Porter offers non-profits a 50% discount.
- Startups
Startup deal through accelerators and investors
The pricing FAQ says funded startups often have access to a deal through investors such as Y Combinator and a16z speedrun, and others can apply for the startup deal.
Qovery
- Annual discount
Save 20% with yearly billing
The pricing page shows a yearly billing toggle labeled as a 20% saving; the plan prices shown are the yearly-billed ones.
- Startups
Extra discount on Scale for Y Combinator and Techstars startups
The pricing page says startups from Y Combinator and Techstars can contact Qovery for an additional discount on the Scale plan.
Common questions
Which is cheaper, Porter or Qovery?
As of Nov 13, 2026, Porter is cheaper to start with: $13 a month, against $299 a month for Qovery. Porter starts at Metered: $6 per GB of RAM and $13 per vCPU, per month, plus your cloud bill, and Qovery starts at $299 per month on Starter, billed yearly.
Which has a free plan, Porter or Qovery?
As of Nov 13, 2026, only Qovery has a free plan. Porter does not.
More comparisons
How this page was made
- The verdict at the top follows a fixed rule. When both tools are in the same category and either is in our top three for it, the verdict follows that ranking: the higher-placed tool is our pick. The top three weigh who each tool suits as well as its grades, so a pick can go against the GPA. Otherwise the page does not pick one and says which grades higher: the higher GPA first; on a tie, the one with a free plan, then the one that starts cheaper in dollars a month, counted the same way for both; if they are still level, what the choice depends on.
- The grades are our own, from each tool’s review or report card. The GPA is their average.
- Prices, plans and platforms come from each tool’s listing. The table above says where each price was read and when.
- The differences and the answers to the questions are worked out from those listings.