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Colaboratory VS Heroku

Compare Colaboratory VS Heroku and see what are their differences

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Colaboratory logo Colaboratory

Free Jupyter notebook environment in the cloud.

Heroku logo Heroku

Agile deployment platform for Ruby, Node.js, Clojure, Java, Python, and Scala. Setup takes only minutes and deploys are instant through git. Leave tedious server maintenance to Heroku and focus on your code.
  • Colaboratory Landing page
    Landing page //
    2022-11-01
  • Heroku Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-10-05

Colaboratory features and specs

  • Free Access
    Colaboratory is freely available to anyone with a Google account, making it accessible for students, researchers, and developers without cost barriers.
  • Cloud-based
    Colab operates in the cloud, eliminating the need for local computational resources and allowing access from any device with internet connectivity.
  • GPU and TPU Support
    Colab provides free access to GPUs and TPUs, which can significantly speed up machine learning tasks and deep learning experiments.
  • Integration with Google Drive
    Easy integration with Google Drive allows for convenient storage and retrieval of data, notebooks, and other resources.
  • Collaborative Editing
    Multiple users can collaborate on a notebook in real-time, making it a valuable tool for team projects and pair programming.
  • Pre-configured Environment
    Colab comes pre-installed with a wide array of popular machine learning libraries and dependencies, reducing setup time and effort.

Possible disadvantages of Colaboratory

  • Session Time Limits
    Colab has time limits for sessions, meaning your environment can be reset if left idle for too long or if the maximum session duration is reached.
  • Resource Limits
    There are limitations on the computational resources and memory available, which can be restrictive for very large and complex tasks.
  • Dependency Management
    While many libraries are pre-installed, managing and updating dependencies can sometimes be problematic, leading to conflicts or version issues.
  • Privacy Concerns
    Since your code and data are stored on Google’s servers, there can be privacy and security concerns related to sensitive information.
  • Network Dependency
    Being a cloud-based service, Colaboratory requires a constant internet connection, which may not be feasible in all scenarios or locations.
  • Limited Customization
    Customization of the environment is limited compared to a local setup where you have full control over system configurations and installed software.

Heroku features and specs

  • Ease of Use
    Heroku offers an extremely user-friendly interface and a high level of abstraction, making it easy for developers to deploy, manage, and scale applications without worrying about the underlying infrastructure.
  • Quick Deployment
    One of Heroku’s strongest points is the ability to deploy applications quickly using Git. Developers can push their code to Heroku with a simple command, streamlining the entire process.
  • Scalability
    Heroku provides effortless scaling options by allowing developers to add more dynos (containers) with a single command to handle increased traffic and workload.
  • Add-Ons Ecosystem
    Heroku offers a rich ecosystem of add-ons, such as databases, caching, monitoring, and more, which can be easily integrated into applications to extend their functionality.
  • Automatic Updates
    Heroku automatically handles operating system and server updates, allowing developers to focus solely on their application code rather than maintenance tasks.
  • Free Tier
    Heroku offers a free tier with sufficient resources to host small projects and learn the platform without incurring costs, making it accessible for beginners and small-scale applications.

Possible disadvantages of Heroku

  • Cost
    While Heroku offers a free tier, the costs can quickly add up for larger applications and professional use. Paid plans and additional dynos or add-ons can become expensive.
  • Performance
    Heroku’s performance can sometimes be suboptimal compared to other cloud providers, particularly when running high-performance or resource-intensive applications.
  • Limited Control
    Heroku abstracts away a lot of infrastructure management, which can be a downside for developers who need fine-grained control over their environments and configurations.
  • Dyno Sleeping
    Applications running on Heroku’s free tier experience 'dyno sleeping,' where the application goes to sleep after 30 minutes of inactivity, causing a delay when it wakes up after receiving a new request.
  • Vendor Lock-In
    Relying heavily on Heroku’s ecosystem and platform-specific features can lead to vendor lock-in, making it challenging to migrate to another platform if needed.
  • Add-On Costs
    The costs for add-ons can also become significant, as many useful features and integrations require paid add-ons, increasing the overall expense.

Analysis of Colaboratory

Overall verdict

  • Yes, Colaboratory is highly praised for its convenience, accessibility, and powerful features which make it an excellent choice for many users, especially those involved in data science, machine learning, and education.

Why this product is good

  • Google Colab (Colaboratory) is a powerful platform for running Jupyter notebooks in the cloud. It offers seamless integration with Google Drive, allowing for easy sharing and collaboration. It also provides access to free resources, including GPUs and TPUs, which is beneficial for tasks requiring substantial computational power such as training machine learning models. The simplicity of running Python code without setup and the support for common libraries make it accessible and easy to use.

Recommended for

  • Data scientists needing scalable resources
  • Researchers and educators looking for collaborative tools
  • Students learning Python and data analysis
  • Anyone wanting to leverage GPU/TPU without additional costs

Analysis of Heroku

Overall verdict

  • Heroku is a solid choice for developers seeking a straightforward, cloud-based solution for deploying and managing applications. However, it may not be the most cost-effective option for large-scale or data-intensive applications.

Why this product is good

  • Heroku is a popular platform as a service (PaaS) due to its ease of use, fast deployment process, and robust support for multiple programming languages. It allows developers to focus on building applications without worrying about the underlying infrastructure. Heroku offers scaling capabilities, a wide variety of add-ons, and a strong developer community.

Recommended for

    Heroku is recommended for startups, small to medium-sized applications, hobby projects, and developers who value ease of use and quick deployment cycles. It is particularly suited for those who are developing web applications in languages such as Ruby, Node.js, Python, and others supported by the platform.

Colaboratory videos

+ Add

Google Colaboratory review: the best tool for Python programming and data analysis

Heroku videos

+ Add

What is Heroku | Ask a Dev Episode 14

More videos:

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Colaboratory and Heroku)

Colaboratory

Heroku

Development
100 100%
Development
0% 0
Cloud Computing
0 0%
Cloud Computing
100% 100
Online Learning
100 100%
Online Learning
0% 0
Cloud Hosting
0 0%
Cloud Hosting
100% 100

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Colaboratory and Heroku

Colaboratory Reviews

Jupyter Notebook & 10 Alternatives: Data Notebook Review [2023]
Google Colaboratory (known as Colab) is a browser-based notebook created by the Google team. The environment is based on the Jupyter Notebook environment, so it will be recognizable to those of you who are already familiar with Jupyter.
Source: lakefs.io
12 Best Jupyter Notebook Alternatives [2023] – Features, pros & cons, pricing
Microsoft Azure Notebooks is a cloud-based platform for data science projects and machine learning that is similar to Google Colab and Kaggle Notebooks. It provides access to powerful hardware resources, including GPUs and TPUs, for running machine learning and deep learning models, as well as a number of other useful features, such as integration with Microsoft Azure...
Source: noteable.io

Heroku Reviews

  1. mark-mercer
    Useful Cloud Platform

    Great service to build, run and manage applications entirely in the cloud!

    🏁 Competitors: Amazon AWS, Dokku on Digital Ocean, Firebase
    👍 Pros:    Easy user interface|Good customer service|Multi-language cloud application platform
    👎 Cons:    Limitation with some addons|Low network performance
  2. jamestelford
    · Full Stack Developer at OutDev ·
    🏁 Competitors: Docker, Amazon AWS
    👍 Pros:    Powerful development environments|Great value for the money|Great customer support|Paas
10 Top Firebase Alternatives to Ignite Your Development in 2024
Heroku’s focus on simplicity and developer experience makes it a perfect fit for those who want to focus on building their apps, not babysitting servers. Startups and small businesses, in particular, can benefit from Heroku’s ability to accelerate development and deployment, allowing them to get their ideas to market faster.
Source: genezio.com
2023 Firebase Alternatives: Top 10 Open-Source & Free
Heroku Postgres – Majority of businesses like Heroku because of its SQL database support. Yes, PostgreSQL as a service is an appealing product of this PaaS vendor with quick deployment approaches.
Source: digitalcruch.com
5 Free Heroku Alternatives with Free Plan for Developers
Koyeb is a decent alternative to Heroku that you can consider for hosting or deploying your web apps and APIs. It has all the features of Heroku that you will need for your projects. So far, I have not encountered an importer tool for migrating Heroku deployments but I am sure doing that manually will not be that hard. Just like Heroku it offers you an intuitive web UI as...
Source: www.ilovefreesoftware.com
Choosing the best Next.js hosting platform
However, there are a few disadvantages to Heroku. First of all, despite its build pack, Heroku will run your project as a Node.js application. As a result, you will lose some of Next.js’ most interesting features, such as Incremental Static Regeneration. Analytics are replaced by metrics and measured throughput, response time, and memory usage (only on paid plans).
Source: blog.logrocket.com
Top 10 Netlify Alternatives
Heroku is another alternative to Netlify that doesn’t only host static websites but has the ability to host dynamic websites. This PaaS platform was launched in 2007 and conferred highly scalable features to deploy, host and launch applications.
Source: blog.back4app.com

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Colaboratory should be more popular than Heroku. It has been mentiond 225 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Colaboratory mentions (225)

  • What Are the Best Code Editors for Collaborative Coding?
    Google Colaboratory is a Jupyter notebook environment specifically built for machine learning and data science applications in Python. It supports collaboration in a unique way:. - Source: dev.to / 2 days ago
  • Introduction to TensorFlow with real code examples
    If you don't want to set up TensorFlow locally, you can use Google Colab, which comes with a GPU by default. You can access it via this link. - Source: dev.to / about 2 months ago
  • The 3 Best Python Frameworks To Build UIs for AI Apps
    Showcase and share: Easily embed UIs in Jupyter Notebook, Google Colab or share them on Hugging Face using a public link. - Source: dev.to / 2 months ago
  • Build a RAG-Powered Research Paper Assistant
    Google Colab Documentation Beginner-friendly documentation to get started with Google Colab: Https://colab.research.google.com/. - Source: dev.to / 3 months ago
  • PyTorch Fundamentals: A Beginner-Friendly Guide
    If you don't want to install PyTorch locally, you can use Google Colab, which provides a free cloud-based environment with PyTorch pre-installed. This allows you to run PyTorch code without any setup on your local machine. Simply go to Google Colab and create a new notebook. - Source: dev.to / 4 months ago
View more

Heroku mentions (73)

  • How to deploy your web application? 3 different approaches to consider (+1 bonus)
    Providers include Digital Ocean, Heroku or Render for example. - Source: dev.to / 8 months ago
  • Heroku Reviews Apps prevent delivering bugs on production
    Review Apps run the code in any GitHub PR in a complete, disposable Heroku application. Review Apps each have a unique URL you can share. It’s then super easy for anyone to try the new code. - Source: dev.to / 12 months ago
  • How to keep an HTTP connection alive for 9 hours
    The app is deployed to Heroku and when it came time to switch the mode to email-on-account-creation mode, it was a very simple environment change:. - Source: dev.to / over 1 year ago
  • How to Process Scheduled Queue Jobs in Node.js with BullMQ and Redis on Heroku
    Heroku is a cloud platform that makes it easy to deploy and scale web applications. It provides a number of features that make it ideal for deploying background job applications, including:. - Source: dev.to / almost 2 years ago
  • I made a Bot.. How do I use it?
    Once you've created it you can host it locally (this means leaving the program running on your computer) or host it through a service online. I haven't personally tried this yet, but I believe you can use a site like heroku.com or other similar services. Source: almost 2 years ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Colaboratory and Heroku, you can also consider the following products

Jupyter - Project Jupyter exists to develop open-source software, open-standards, and services for interactive computing across dozens of programming languages. Ready to get started? Try it in your browser Install the Notebook.

DigitalOcean - Simplifying cloud hosting. Deploy an SSD cloud server in 55 seconds.

Kaggle - Kaggle offers innovative business results and solutions to companies.

Linode - We make it simple to develop, deploy, and scale cloud infrastructure at the best price-to-performance ratio in the market.

Teammately.ai - Teammately is The AI AI-Engineer - the AI Agent for AI Engineers that autonomously builds AI Products, Models and Agents based on LLM, prompt, RAG and ML.

Amazon AWS - Amazon Web Services offers reliable, scalable, and inexpensive cloud computing services. Free to join, pay only for what you use.

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