Is Heroku Down? How to Check Heroku Status in Real-Time

Quick Answer: To check if Heroku is down, visit status.heroku.com for official updates or use API Status Check's Heroku monitor for real-time status tracking and instant alerts when outages occur.

When your deployed application suddenly becomes unreachable, the first question that comes to mind is: "Is Heroku down, or is it just me?" For developers relying on Heroku's Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) to host production applications, distinguishing between a widespread Heroku outage and an application-specific issue is critical for rapid incident response.

This guide walks you through everything you need to know about checking Heroku status, understanding common Heroku errors, and responding effectively when Heroku experiences downtime.

How to Check Heroku Status Right Now

Official Heroku Status Page

The primary source for Heroku status updates is status.heroku.com. This official status page provides:

• Real-time incident reports across all Heroku regions (US, EU, Asia)
• Component-level status for Runtime, Data (Postgres), Platform API, Dashboard, and Add-ons
• Historical incident data with root cause analyses
• Scheduled maintenance windows that may impact availability

The Heroku status page categorizes incidents by severity:

• 🟢 Operational - All systems functioning normally
• 🟡 Degraded Performance - Partial functionality or slowness
• 🟠 Partial Outage - Some components unavailable
• 🔴 Major Outage - Widespread service disruption

API Status Check for Automated Monitoring

For developers who need programmatic access to Heroku status or want automated alerts, API Status Check provides:

• Real-time status API you can integrate into dashboards or monitoring tools
• Instant notifications via email, Slack, or webhook when Heroku goes down
• Uptime tracking with historical outage data
• Multi-region monitoring to detect regional issues

You can check Heroku status programmatically:

curl https://apistatuscheck.com/api/heroku

This returns a JSON response with current status, recent incidents, and uptime metrics—perfect for integrating into your CI/CD pipeline or status dashboard.

Community Indicators

Beyond official channels, developers often report Heroku issues on:

• Twitter/X - Search for "heroku down" or "#herokustatus"
• Hacker News - Check the front page during major outages
• Reddit r/Heroku - Community discussions about ongoing issues
• DownDetector - User-reported outage data and heat maps

While community reports aren't official, they can provide early warning signals before Heroku acknowledges an incident.

Common Heroku Issues and Error Codes

Not every Heroku problem is a platform-wide outage. Understanding common error codes helps you diagnose whether the issue is with Heroku's infrastructure or your application.

H10 - App Crashed

Error: Error H10 (App crashed) - A crashed web dyno or a boot timeout (shorter than 60 seconds) will present this error.

Meaning: Your application failed to start or crashed after deployment.

Common Causes:

• Application code errors (syntax, runtime exceptions)
• Missing dependencies in package.json, requirements.txt, or Gemfile
• Database connection failures during boot
• Port binding issues (not listening on process.env.PORT)

Not a Heroku outage - This is an application-level issue.

H12 - Request Timeout

Error: Error H12 (Request timeout) - An HTTP request took longer than 30 seconds to complete.

Meaning: Heroku's router terminated the request because it exceeded the 30-second timeout limit.

Could indicate:

• Slow database queries or external API calls
• Insufficient dyno resources for workload
• During outages: Database connectivity issues affecting response times

H14 - No Web Dynos Running

Error: Error H14 (No web dynos running) - The formation includes no web dynos.

Meaning: Your Heroku app has zero web dynos scaled up.

Common Causes:

• Dynos scaled down to zero (manual or automatic)
• Eco dyno sleeping after 30 minutes of inactivity
• Deployment failure that didn't start any dynos

Check: heroku ps to see current dyno formation.

H18 - Server Request Interrupted

Error: Error H18 (Server Request Interrupted) - A request was interrupted before completing.

Meaning: The connection between Heroku's router and your dyno was severed.

Could indicate:

• Network issues within Heroku's infrastructure
• Dyno restarts (intentional or crash-related)
• During outages: Router or networking layer problems

H99 - Platform Error

Error: Error H99 (Platform error) - Heroku cannot serve the request due to internal errors.

Meaning: Something is wrong with Heroku's platform infrastructure.

This IS a Heroku issue - Check status.heroku.com immediately. H99 errors typically indicate:

• Router layer failures
• Internal service disruptions
• Region-wide infrastructure problems

Database Connectivity Errors

Heroku Postgres issues often manifest as:

• FATAL: remaining connection slots are reserved - Connection pool exhausted
• could not connect to server: Connection refused - Database unreachable
• FATAL: no pg_hba.conf entry for host - Connection authentication failed

During Heroku outages, you might see widespread database connectivity failures across multiple applications, especially if Heroku Data services are affected.

Build Failures

Build and deployment issues include:

• Slug compilation timeout - Build process exceeded time limits
• Build pack detection failure - Heroku couldn't identify your application type
• Dependencies failed to install - NPM, pip, or bundler errors

While individual build failures are typically code-related, widespread build failures across multiple apps can indicate Heroku Build Service issues.

The Official Heroku Status Page Explained

Heroku's status page breaks down platform health by component:

Runtime

The core dyno execution environment. Issues here mean:

• Dynos failing to start
• Dyno crashes or restarts
• Container orchestration problems

Data (Heroku Postgres)

Database service health. Outages affect:

• Database connectivity
• Query performance
• Backup/restore operations
• Point-in-time recovery

Platform API

The Heroku API that powers the CLI and dashboard. When down:

• heroku CLI commands fail
• Deployments blocked
• Scaling operations unavailable
• Add-on provisioning broken

Dashboard

The web-based Heroku Dashboard. Outages prevent:

• Viewing logs via web UI
• Managing apps through browser
• Accessing metrics and monitoring

Add-ons Ecosystem

Third-party services integrated with Heroku. Issues can affect:

• Redis, Memcache connectivity
• Monitoring tools (New Relic, Datadog)
• Logging services (Papertrail, Logentries)

Impact When Heroku Goes Down

Heroku outages can have cascading effects across your entire infrastructure:

1. Deployed Applications Become Unreachable

The most immediate impact: your production apps go offline. This means:

• Customer-facing websites return 503 errors
• API endpoints become unavailable
• Mobile app backends stop responding
• Revenue loss for e-commerce applications
• Customer trust erosion

2. CI/CD Pipelines Break

Modern development workflows rely on Heroku for:

• Review apps - Pull request preview environments fail to provision
• Staging deployments - Cannot deploy code changes for QA testing
• Automated tests - Integration tests against Heroku-hosted services fail
• Build processes - GitHub Actions, CircleCI pipelines blocked

3. Database Access Lost

When Heroku Data services experience issues:

• Data writes blocked - Customer transactions, user registrations fail
• Data reads fail - Applications can't retrieve user data
• Backup operations interrupted - Scheduled backups may not complete
• Data consistency risks - Partial writes during outage recovery

4. Monitoring and Logging Gaps

Outages can blind your observability:

• Application logs stop flowing to aggregators
• Metrics collection interrupted
• Alerting systems may not capture the full incident timeline

5. Team Productivity Halted

Developers lose access to:

• Heroku CLI for troubleshooting
• Dashboard for log inspection
• Database consoles for data investigation
• Add-on configuration panels

What to Do When Heroku Is Down

Immediate Response (First 15 Minutes)

1. Confirm the Outage

• Check status.heroku.com for official acknowledgment
• Verify via API Status Check
• Confirm multiple apps/regions affected (not just yours)

2. Communicate with Stakeholders

• Notify customers via status page or social media
• Update internal teams (support, sales, management)
• Set expectations about resolution timeline

3. Enable Maintenance Mode (if possible)

• If you have partial control, route traffic to a static maintenance page
• Use DNS-level failover if configured
• Display a user-friendly message with estimated restoration time

Short-Term Mitigation (15-60 Minutes)

1. Activate Fallback Infrastructure

If you have redundancy:

• DNS failover to backup hosting (AWS, Render, Fly.io)
• Load balancer reconfiguration to route around Heroku
• Static site activation with apology message and status updates

2. Monitor Official Updates

• Subscribe to status.heroku.com notifications
• Watch Heroku's Twitter account for updates
• Check Heroku Support ticket for estimated restoration

3. Assess Business Impact

• Calculate downtime cost (lost transactions, SLA breaches)
• Prioritize which services need immediate restoration
• Document incident for post-mortem

Post-Outage Actions

1. Verify Full Restoration

• Test critical application flows
• Check database integrity
• Verify dyno counts match expected formation
• Review logs for errors during recovery

2. Conduct Post-Mortem

• Document timeline and business impact
• Identify gaps in incident response
• Update runbooks with lessons learned

3. Improve Resilience

• Implement multi-region deployment
• Set up automated failover mechanisms
• Subscribe to proactive monitoring (like API Status Check)
• Consider multi-cloud strategy for critical applications

Long-Term Prevention Strategies

1. Status Monitoring and Alerting

Don't rely on manual checking:

• Subscribe to API Status Check alerts for instant notifications
• Configure webhook integrations to trigger incident response workflows
• Set up internal status dashboards aggregating Heroku status

2. Multi-Region Deployment

Deploy across multiple Heroku regions:

• us region (Virginia)
• eu region (Dublin)
• asia region (Tokyo)

Use DNS-based load balancing (Route 53, Cloudflare) to distribute traffic and fail over during regional outages.

3. Multi-Cloud Architecture

For mission-critical applications, consider:

• Primary: Heroku for developer experience
• Failover: AWS ECS, Render, or Fly.io for redundancy
• Data layer: Separate database hosting (AWS RDS, Google Cloud SQL) with connection pooling

4. Graceful Degradation

Design applications to handle outages:

• Cache frequently accessed data
• Queue non-critical operations
• Provide limited functionality during partial outages
• Display helpful error messages instead of crashes

5. Incident Response Runbooks

Document procedures for:

• Detecting Heroku vs. application issues
• Activating failover systems
• Communicating with customers
• Restoring service after outages

FAQ: Heroku Status and Outages

How do I check if Heroku is down right now?

Visit status.heroku.com for official status updates, or use API Status Check for real-time monitoring and automated alerts. You can also search Twitter for "heroku down" to see community reports.

What is the Heroku status page URL?

The official Heroku status page is status.heroku.com. It provides real-time updates on all Heroku services including Runtime, Data, Platform API, Dashboard, and Add-ons across all regions.

How often does Heroku go down?

Heroku maintains strong uptime (typically 99.9%+), but outages do occur. Major incidents are rare (several times per year), while minor degraded performance events are more common. Check status.heroku.com/uptime for historical data.

How do I get notified when Heroku has an outage?

Subscribe to Heroku status updates via:

• Email notifications from status.heroku.com
• Automated alerts from API Status Check
• Slack/webhook integrations for your team's incident response channel
• Twitter notifications from @herokustatus

What should I do if my Heroku app is down but the status page shows no issues?

If Heroku shows operational but your app is down, the issue is likely application-specific:

1. Check heroku logs --tail for error messages
2. Verify dyno count with heroku ps
3. Review recent deployments that may have introduced bugs
4. Check database connection limits and query performance
5. Inspect custom domain DNS configuration

Can I get a refund for Heroku downtime?

Heroku's Service Level Agreement (SLA) provides credits for downtime exceeding thresholds, but only for certain paid plans. Review your plan's SLA terms and submit a support ticket if you qualify for credits.

How long do Heroku outages typically last?

Most Heroku incidents are resolved within 1-3 hours. Minor degraded performance may last 15-30 minutes, while major outages affecting core infrastructure can occasionally extend to several hours. Historical incident data is available on status.heroku.com.

Is there a Heroku status API I can use programmatically?

Yes! Use API Status Check's Heroku endpoint for programmatic access to Heroku status. This allows you to integrate status checks into dashboards, monitoring tools, or automated incident response systems.

Stay Ahead of Heroku Outages

Don't wait for your users to report that your app is down. Subscribe to API Status Check for:

• ⚡ Instant alerts when Heroku status changes
• 📊 Uptime tracking with historical outage data
• 🔗 API access for programmatic status checks
• 📱 Multi-channel notifications (email, Slack, webhook)

Monitor Heroku status in real-time and respond to incidents before they impact your customers.

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Last Updated: February 4, 2026
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