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Heroku vs Sst

Heroku scores higher on the AgentReady, 63/100 against 44/100. They differ on 7 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.

Sst. SST is a framework that makes it easy to build modern full-stack applications on your own infrastructure.

Where Heroku is ahead

Heroku passes clear product positioning and mcp discoverable, and Sst does not. That is discover, whether an agent can find the product at all without being told it exists.

It also holds understand: limits / constraints documented. Sst misses it.

And on adopt, no mandatory sales call, copyable quickstart and mcp integration available. Sst misses those.

Finally, on operate, structured, predictable output. Sst misses it.

What neither does

Both fail openapi / spec quality, authentication documented, pricing understandable, request examples provided, response examples provided, errors and status codes documented, self-service signup, programmatic credential creation, free trial or free allowance, fast time to first request, 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; Sst misses clear product positioning, mcp discoverable.

Understand. Heroku leads 38 to 31. Heroku misses openapi / spec quality, authentication documented, pricing understandable, request examples provided, response examples provided, errors and status codes documented; Sst misses openapi / spec quality, authentication documented, pricing understandable, request examples provided, response examples provided, errors and status codes documented, limits / constraints documented.

Adopt is whether an agent can get a key and make its first successful call without a human in the loop. Heroku leads 65 to 38. Heroku misses self-service signup, programmatic credential creation, free trial or free allowance, fast time to first request; Sst misses self-service signup, no mandatory sales call, programmatic credential creation, free trial or free allowance, fast time to first request, copyable quickstart, mcp integration available.

Operate. Heroku leads 47 to 35. Heroku misses machine-readable errors, retry behavior documented, idempotency support, rate-limit behavior predictable, agent compatibility verified; Sst misses structured, predictable output, 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. Sst 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 Sst. Alternatives to each: Heroku, Sst.

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