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Heroku vs Northflank

Heroku scores higher on the AgentReady, 63/100 against 46/100. They differ on 10 of the 41 signals. Which ones decides whether an agent can adopt them without a person watching.

What each one is

Heroku. Heroku is a fully managed cloud application platform (PaaS) for building, deploying, and scaling apps.

Northflank. The runtime platform for AI-native companies.

Where Heroku is ahead

Heroku passes llms.txt published, llms-full.txt / full agent docs and mcp discoverable, and Northflank does not. That is discover, whether an agent can find the product at all without being told it exists.

It also holds understand: structured api reference and limits / constraints documented. Northflank misses those.

And on adopt, no mandatory sales call, official typescript sdk and mcp integration available. Northflank misses those.

Where Northflank is ahead

Northflank passes self-service signup and fast time to first request, and Heroku does not. That is adopt, whether an agent can get a key and make its first successful call without a human in the loop.

What neither does

Both fail openapi / spec quality, authentication documented, pricing understandable, request examples provided, response examples provided, errors and status codes documented, programmatic credential creation, free trial or free allowance, machine-readable errors, retry behavior documented, idempotency support, rate-limit behavior predictable, agent compatibility verified. If your agent needs any of those, you will be building it yourself either way.

Score, pillar by pillar

The AgentReady splits into four pillars, scored separately, because a product can be easy to find and still impossible to adopt.

Discover is whether an agent can find the product at all without being told it exists. Heroku leads 100 to 73. Heroku misses nothing; Northflank misses llms.txt published, llms-full.txt / full agent docs, mcp discoverable.

Understand. Heroku leads 38 to 15. Heroku misses openapi / spec quality, authentication documented, pricing understandable, request examples provided, response examples provided, errors and status codes documented; Northflank misses structured api reference, openapi / spec quality, authentication documented, pricing understandable, request examples provided, response examples provided, errors and status codes documented, limits / constraints documented.

Adopt. Heroku leads 65 to 50. Heroku misses self-service signup, programmatic credential creation, free trial or free allowance, fast time to first request; Northflank misses no mandatory sales call, programmatic credential creation, free trial or free allowance, official typescript sdk, mcp integration available.

Operate. Both sit at 47/100 here. Heroku misses machine-readable errors, retry behavior documented, idempotency support, rate-limit behavior predictable, agent compatibility verified; Northflank misses machine-readable errors, retry behavior documented, idempotency support, rate-limit behavior predictable, agent compatibility verified.

Pricing

Heroku does not publish a machine-readable starting price. Northflank does not publish one.

Signal by signal

Which to pick

Heroku clears more of the signals an agent needs, so it is the safer default for unattended use. Full profiles: Heroku and Northflank. Alternatives to each: Heroku, Northflank.

An agent can fetch this as data: POST /v1/compare {"slugs": ["heroku", "northflank"]}