How to Migrate from Heroku to Railway

Audit Your Heroku Setup

Log in to your Heroku dashboard and document everything about your current deployment. Note the buildpacks your application uses, the dyno type and count, all environment variables configured in the Settings tab, any attached add-ons such as Heroku Postgres, Redis, or scheduled jobs, and your custom domain configuration. Export your Heroku Postgres database connection string and check the database size so you know what tier you will need on Railway. Review your Procfile to understand how your application processes are defined, as Railway uses a similar but not identical deployment configuration.

Create a Railway Account and Project

Sign up at railway.app using your GitHub account for the easiest integration. Create a new project from the Railway dashboard. Railway offers a generous free tier and usage-based pricing that is often significantly cheaper than Heroku for small to medium applications. Link your GitHub repository to the project by selecting Deploy from GitHub Repo and choosing the appropriate repository and branch. Railway automatically detects most frameworks and languages including Node.js, Python, Ruby, Go, and Java, and configures the build and start commands accordingly without needing a Procfile in many cases.

Configure Environment Variables

In your Railway project dashboard, navigate to the Variables tab for your service. Add all the environment variables from your Heroku application. You can copy them from the Heroku Settings tab or export them using the Heroku CLI config export command for your app. Railway supports variable references that let you use values from one service in another, which is useful for database connection strings. Sensitive values like API keys and database passwords are encrypted at rest. You can also create shared variables at the project level that are accessible by multiple services within the same project.

Migrate Your Database

Add a PostgreSQL plugin to your Railway project by clicking New and selecting Database then PostgreSQL. Railway provisions a managed PostgreSQL instance and provides a connection string as an automatically injected variable for your database connection. To migrate your data, create a backup of your Heroku Postgres database using the Heroku CLI backup and download commands to get a local dump file. Then restore this dump to your Railway PostgreSQL instance using pg_restore with the Railway connection string. Verify data integrity by comparing row counts and spot-checking critical tables after the migration.

Update Your Application Configuration

Review your application code for any Heroku-specific configurations that need updating. Replace references to the port variable if your framework does not automatically detect it, as Railway assigns a port dynamically just like Heroku. Update your database connection code to use the database URL variable provided by Railway's PostgreSQL plugin. If you used Heroku-specific add-ons like Heroku Redis, add a Redis plugin in Railway and update the connection string reference. Remove any Heroku buildpack dependencies and ensure your application's build and start commands work independently of the Heroku platform.

Configure Custom Domains and Networking

Navigate to the Settings tab of your Railway service and add your custom domain. Railway provides a default subdomain under up.railway.app for testing before switching your production domain. Update your DNS records to point your custom domain to Railway using the CNAME record value provided in the dashboard. Railway automatically provisions and renews SSL certificates for custom domains using Let's Encrypt. If your application needs to communicate with other services internally, Railway provides private networking between services within the same project, which avoids exposing internal APIs to the public internet.

Test and Cut Over

Before directing production traffic to Railway, thoroughly test your deployed application on the Railway-provided subdomain. Verify all API endpoints, database queries, background jobs, and external service integrations work correctly. Compare response times and error rates against your Heroku deployment. Once you are confident the Railway deployment is stable, update your DNS records to point your production domain to Railway. Monitor logs and metrics in the Railway dashboard for the first 48 hours after cutover. After confirming everything is stable, scale down and eventually delete your Heroku application and add-ons to stop incurring charges.