Nexos vs Heroku Review Apps: the modern rewrite

If you worked on a Heroku app in the early 2010s, Review Apps probably felt like a small miracle. A URL per pull request, a copy of your app stack, a button to tear it down. It was ahead of its time.

In 2026, the idea of a URL per branch is table stakes — but Heroku's implementation has not kept pace with what a modern preview workflow can look like. The prices have crept up, the developer experience has not evolved, and the pipeline architecture is heavy compared to git-driven alternatives.

What Heroku got right

• First-class review app concept — one URL per PR, automatic teardown
• Add-on marketplace for databases, caches, queues
• Simple git push heroku mental model

What feels dated

• Per-dyno pricing with no per-second billing
• Review apps provision full managed databases that bill as Heroku Postgres — expensive for ephemeral workloads
• Pipeline-centric UI that is heavier than many teams want
• Eco / Basic dyno hours rather than true usage-based billing

Nexos: the same idea, rebuilt for today

Nexos preserves what was great about Review Apps — a URL per branch, automatic provisioning, automatic teardown — and rebuilds the engine under it with modern economics:

• Per-second CPU and RAM billing
• Lightweight preview-sized databases per environment, not full managed clusters
• Incremental deploys that leave your database intact so test data survives every push
• Pause-and-resume for environments you want to keep around overnight without paying for them

If Heroku Review Apps is a workflow you miss and you have been looking for something that fits a modern monorepo and a modern budget, Nexos is the closest thing today.