Getting Started on Heroku with Node.js

Introduction

Complete this tutorial to deploy a sample Node.js app to Cedar, the legacy generation of the Heroku platform. To deploy the app to the Fir generation, only available to Heroku Private Spaces, follow this guide instead.

The tutorial assumes that you have:

• A verified Heroku Account
• An Eco dynos plan subscription (recommended)
• Node.js and npm installed locally
• Postgres installed locally

Set Up

Install the Heroku Command Line Interface (CLI). Use the CLI to manage and scale your app, provision add-ons, view your logs, and run your app locally.

Download and run the installer for your platform:

After installation, you can use the heroku command from your command shell.

To log in to the Heroku CLI, use the heroku login command:

$ heroku login
heroku: Press any key to open up the browser to login or q to exit:
Opening browser to https://cli-auth.heroku.com/auth/cli/browser/***
heroku: Waiting for login...
Logging in... done
Logged in as me@example.com

This command opens your web browser to the Heroku login page. If your browser is already logged in to Heroku, click the Log In button on the page.

This authentication is required for the heroku and git commands to work correctly.

If you have any problems installing or using the Heroku CLI, see the main Heroku CLI article for advice and troubleshooting steps.

Clone the Sample App

Clone the sample application to get a local version of the code. Execute these commands in your local command shell or terminal:

$ git clone https://github.com/heroku/nodejs-getting-started.git
$ cd nodejs-getting-started

You now have a functioning Git repository that contains a simple application. It includes a package.json file, which a Node.js dependency manager (like npm), can use to install dependencies.

Create Your App

 

Create an app on Heroku to prepare the platform to receive your source code:

$ heroku create --stack heroku-26
Creating app... done, boiling-woodland-52568, stack is heroku-26
https://boiling-woodland-52568-b0018e096e3b.herokuapp.com/ | https://git.heroku.com/boiling-woodland-52568.git

When you create an app, a Git remote named heroku is also created and added to your local repository configuration. Git remotes are versions of your repository that live on other servers. You can deploy your app by pushing code to that special Heroku-hosted remote associated with your app.

Heroku generates a random name for your app, in this case, boiling-woodland-52568. You can specify your own app name.

Deploy the App

Deploy your code. This command pushes the main branch of the sample repo to your heroku remote, which then deploys to Heroku:

$ git push heroku main
remote: Updated 21 paths from 6f3a62b
remote: Compressing source files... done.
remote: Building source:
remote:
remote: -----> Building on the Heroku-26 stack
remote: -----> Determining which buildpack to use for this app
remote: -----> Node.js app detected
remote:
remote: -----> Creating runtime environment
remote:
remote:        NPM_CONFIG_LOGLEVEL=error
remote:        NODE_VERBOSE=false
remote:        NODE_ENV=production
remote:        NODE_MODULES_CACHE=true
remote:
remote: -----> Installing binaries
remote:        engines.node (package.json):   22.x || 24.x || 26.x
remote:        engines.npm (package.json):    12.x
remote:
remote:        Resolving node version 22.x || 24.x || 26.x...
remote:
remote:  !     The resolved Node.js version has been limited to the Active LTS (24.22.0) for the requested range of `22.x || 24.x || 26.x`.
remote:  !     To opt-out of this behavior, set the following config var: `NODEJS_ALLOW_WIDE_RANGE=true`
remote:  !     https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/nodejs-support#supported-node-js-versions
remote:
remote:        Downloading and installing node 24.22.0...
remote:        Validating checksum
remote:        Bootstrapping npm 12.x (replacing 11.19.1)...
remote:        npm 12.2.0 installed
remote:
remote: -----> Installing dependencies
remote:        Installing node modules
remote:
remote:        added 342 packages in 3s
remote:
remote: -----> Build
remote:
remote: -----> Caching build
remote:        - npm cache
remote:
remote: -----> Pruning devDependencies
remote:
remote:        removed 276 packages in 819ms
remote: -----> Discovering process types
remote:        Procfile declares types -> web
remote:
remote: -----> Compressing...
remote:        Done: 56.7M
remote: -----> Launching...
remote:        Released v3
remote:        https://boiling-woodland-52568-b0018e096e3b.herokuapp.com/ deployed to Heroku
remote:
remote: Verifying deploy... done.
To https://git.heroku.com/boiling-woodland-52568.git
 * [new branch]      main -> main

Visit the app at the URL shown in the logs. As a shortcut, you can also open the website as follows:

$ heroku open

Understanding the Procfile

Use a Procfile, a text file in the root directory of your application, to explicitly declare what command to execute to start your app.

The Procfile in the example app looks like this:

web: node index.js

This Procfile declares a single process type, web, and the command needed to run it. The name web is important here. It declares that this process type is attached to Heroku’s HTTP routing stack and receives web traffic when deployed. This command uses the node executable to run the index.js file which starts the application.

A Procfile can contain additional process types. For example, you can declare a background worker process that processes items off a queue.

View Logs

Heroku treats logs as streams of time-ordered events, aggregated from the output streams of all your app and Heroku components. Heroku provides a single stream for all events.

View information about your running app by using one of the logging commands, heroku logs --tail:

$ heroku logs --tail
2026-10-16T12:33:44.661156+00:00 heroku[web.1]: Starting process with command `node index.js`
2026-10-16T12:33:45.502041+00:00 app[web.1]: Listening on 59156
2026-10-16T12:33:45.814940+00:00 heroku[web.1]: State changed from starting to up
2026-10-16T12:33:57.206716+00:00 app[web.1]: Rendering 'pages/index' for route '/'
2026-10-16T12:33:57.215571+00:00 heroku[router]: at=info method=GET path="/" host=boiling-woodland-52568-b0018e096e3b.herokuapp.com request_id=28575213-b6cb-d8e6-388f-5db86f42b762 fwd="123.456.789.0" dyno=web.1 connect=0ms service=13ms status=200 bytes=9109 protocol=http2.0 tls=true tls_version=tls1.3

To generate more log messages, refresh the app in your browser.

To stop streaming the logs, press Control+C.

Scale the App

After deploying the sample app, it automatically runs on a single web dyno. Think of a dyno as a lightweight container that runs the command specified in the Procfile.

You can check how many dynos are running by using the ps command:

$ heroku ps
=== web (Basic): node index.js (1)

web.1: up 2026/10/16 12:33:45 +0000 (~ 18s ago)

Scaling an app on Heroku is equivalent to changing the number of running dynos. Scale the number of web dynos to zero:

$ heroku ps:scale web=0
$ heroku ps:wait

Access the app again by hitting refresh in your browser, or heroku open to open it in a web tab. You get an error message because you no longer have web dynos available to serve requests.

Scale it up again:

$ heroku ps:scale web=1
$ heroku ps:wait

By default, apps use Eco dynos if you’re subscribed to Eco. Otherwise, it defaults to Basic dynos. The Eco dynos plan is shared across all Eco dynos in your account and is recommended if you plan on deploying many small apps to Heroku. Eco dynos sleep if they don’t receive any traffic for half an hour. This sleep behavior causes a few seconds delay for the first request upon waking. Eco dynos consume from a monthly, account-level quota of eco dyno hours. As long as you haven’t exhausted the quota, your apps can continue to run.

To avoid dyno sleeping, upgrade to a Basic or higher dyno type as described in the Dyno Types article. Upgrading to at least Standard dynos allows you to scale up to multiple dynos per process type.

Declare App Dependencies

Heroku recognizes an app as Node.js from a package.json file in the root directory. For your own apps, you can create one by running npm init --yes.

The demo app you deployed already has a package.json that looks like:

{
  "name": "nodejs-getting-started",
  "private": true,
  "description": "A sample Node.js app using Express",
  "engines": {
    "node": "22.x || 24.x || 26.x",
    "npm": "12.x"
  ...
  },
  "dependencies": {
    "ejs": "^7.0.1",
    "express": "^5.3.0"
  ...

The package.json file determines the version of Node.js to run your application on Heroku and the dependencies to install with your application.

Run this command in your local directory to install the dependencies, preparing your system to run the app locally.

$ npm install
npm warn deprecated glob@10.5.0: Old versions of glob are not supported, and contain widely publicized security vulnerabilities, which have been fixed in the current version. Please update. Support for old versions may be purchased (at exorbitant rates) by contacting i@izs.me

added 342 packages, and audited 343 packages in 6s

69 packages are looking for funding
  run `npm fund` for details

19 moderate severity vulnerabilities

To address all issues (including breaking changes), run:
  npm audit fix --force

Run `npm audit` for details.
npm warn install-scripts 2 packages had install scripts blocked because they are not covered by allowScripts:
npm warn install-scripts   @parcel/watcher@2.6.0 (install: node scripts/build-from-source.js)
npm warn install-scripts   unrs-resolver@1.12.2 (postinstall: node postinstall.js)
npm warn install-scripts
npm warn install-scripts Run `npm install-scripts ls` to review, or `npm install-scripts approve <pkg>` to allow.

In your development environment, a package-lock.json file is generated or updated when npm install is run. It’s important that changes to this lockfile are always committed to git before deploying your app since, if the dependencies in the lockfile are out of sync with package.json, the application will fail to build.

Run the App Locally

Start your application locally using the heroku local command, which installed as part of the Heroku CLI.

$ heroku local web --port 5006
[OKAY] Loaded ENV .env File as KEY=VALUE Format
12:34:10 PM web.1 |  Listening on 5006

Just like Heroku, heroku local examines the Procfile to determine what to run.

Open http://localhost:5006 with your web browser to see your app running locally.

To stop the app from running locally, in the CLI, press Ctrl+C to exit.

Push Local Changes

In this step, you learn how to propagate a local change to the application through to Heroku. As an example, lets modify the application to add a dependency and the code to use it.

Begin by adding a dependency for cool-ascii-faces in package.json. Run this command.

$ npm install cool-ascii-faces

added 11 packages, and audited 354 packages in 3s

69 packages are looking for funding
  run `npm fund` for details

19 moderate severity vulnerabilities

To address all issues (including breaking changes), run:
  npm audit fix --force

Run `npm audit` for details.
npm warn install-scripts 2 packages had install scripts blocked because they are not covered by allowScripts:
npm warn install-scripts   @parcel/watcher@2.6.0 (install: node-gyp rebuild)
npm warn install-scripts   unrs-resolver@1.12.2 (postinstall: node postinstall.js)
npm warn install-scripts
npm warn install-scripts Run `npm install-scripts ls` to review, or `npm install-scripts approve <pkg>` to allow.

Modify index.js so that it requires this module at the start. Also add a new route (/cool) that uses it. You want the final code to look like:

const express = require('express')
const path = require('path')
const cool = require('cool-ascii-faces')

const port = process.env.PORT || 5006

const app = express()

app.use(express.static(path.join(__dirname, 'public')))
app.set('views', path.join(__dirname, 'views'))
app.set('view engine', 'ejs')

app.get('/', (req, res) => {
  console.log(`Rendering 'pages/index' for route '/'`)
  res.render('pages/index')
})

app.get('/cool', (req, res) => {
  console.log(`Rendering a cool ascii face for route '/cool'`)
  res.send(cool())
})

const server = app.listen(port, () => {
  console.log(`Listening on ${port}`)
})

// The number of seconds an idle Keep-Alive connection is kept open. This should be greater than the Heroku Router's
// Keep-Alive idle timeout of 90 seconds:
// - to ensure that the closing of idle connections is always initiated by the router and not the Node.js server
// - to prevent a race condition if the router sends a request to the app just as Node.js is closing the connection
// https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/http-routing#keepalives
// https://nodejs.org/api/http.html#serverkeepalivetimeout
server.keepAliveTimeout = 95 * 1000

process.on('SIGTERM', async () => {
  console.log('SIGTERM signal received: gracefully shutting down')
  if (server) {
    server.close(() => {
      console.log('HTTP server closed')
    })
  }
  // Cleanup after server close
})

Test locally.

When you visit your application at http://localhost:5006/cool, the sample application shows you cute faces on each refresh: ( ⚆ _ ⚆ ).

Deploy. Almost every deploy to Heroku follows this same pattern. First, add the modified files to the local Git repository.

$ git add .

Commit the changes to the repository.

$ git commit -m "Add cool face API"
[main f80d304] Add cool face API
 3 files changed, 99 insertions(+)

Deploy, just as you did previously.

$ git push heroku main

Check that everything works.

$ heroku open cool

If everything is in working order, you see another face.

Provision a Logging Add-on

Add-ons are third-party cloud services that provide out-of-the-box additional services for your application, from persistence through logging to monitoring and more.

By default, Heroku stores 1500 lines of logs from your application, but the full log stream is available as a service. Several add-on providers have logging services that provide things such as log persistence, search, and email and SMS alerts.

In this step, you provision one of these logging add-ons, Papertrail, using its free plan.

Provision the Papertrail logging add-on:

$ heroku addons:create papertrail
Creating papertrail on boiling-woodland-52568... free
Provisioning has been successful
Created papertrail-tapered-31772
Run heroku addons:docs papertrail to view documentation.

The add-on is now deployed and configured for your app. You can list add-ons for your app with this command:

$ heroku addons

 Add-on                                 Plan     Price  Max Price  State
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
 papertrail (papertrail-tapered-31772)  choklad  free   free       created
 └─ as PAPERTRAIL


The table above shows add-ons and the attachments to the current app (boiling-woodland-52568) or other apps.

To see this particular add-on in action, visit your application’s Heroku URL a few times. Each visit generates more log messages, which get routed to the Papertrail add-on. Visit the Papertrail console to see the log messages:

$ heroku addons:open papertrail

Your browser opens up a Papertrail web console, showing the latest log events. The interface lets you search and set up alerts.

Start a Console

You can run a command, typically scripts and applications that are part of your app, in a one-off dyno using the heroku run command. You can also run an interactive bash session in your app’s environment:

$ heroku run bash
Running bash on boiling-woodland-52568... starting, run.8552
Running bash on boiling-woodland-52568... connecting, run.8552
Running bash on boiling-woodland-52568... up, run.8552
~ $ ls -A
.env	    .profile.d		README.md    node_modules	test.js
.github	    CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md	SECURITY.md  package-lock.json	views
.gitignore  LICENSE		app.json     package.json
.heroku	    Procfile		index.js     public
~ $                                                                            
~ $ exit
exit

Type exit to exit the shell.

Define Config Vars

With Heroku, you can externalize configuration, storing data such as encryption keys or external resource addresses in config vars.

At runtime, config vars are exposed as environment variables to the application.

For example, lets modify index.js to introduce a new route, /times, that repeats an action depending on the value of the TIMES environment variable. Copy the following into index.js:

const express = require('express')
const path = require('path')
const cool = require('cool-ascii-faces')

const port = process.env.PORT || 5006

const app = express()

app.use(express.static(path.join(__dirname, 'public')))
app.set('views', path.join(__dirname, 'views'))
app.set('view engine', 'ejs')

app.get('/', (req, res) => {
  console.log(`Rendering 'pages/index' for route '/'`)
  res.render('pages/index')
})

app.get('/cool', (req, res) => {
  console.log(`Rendering a cool ascii face for route '/cool'`)
  res.send(cool())
})

app.get('/times', (req, res) => {
  const times = process.env.TIMES || 5
  console.log(`Rendering a count from 1 to ${times} for route '/times'`)
  let result = ''
  for (let i = 1; i <= times; i++) {
    result += i + ' '
  }
  res.send(result)
})

const server = app.listen(port, () => {
  console.log(`Listening on ${port}`)
})

// The number of seconds an idle Keep-Alive connection is kept open. This should be greater than the Heroku Router's
// Keep-Alive idle timeout of 90 seconds:
// - to ensure that the closing of idle connections is always initiated by the router and not the Node.js server
// - to prevent a race condition if the router sends a request to the app just as Node.js is closing the connection
// https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/http-routing#keepalives
// https://nodejs.org/api/http.html#serverkeepalivetimeout
server.keepAliveTimeout = 95 * 1000

process.on('SIGTERM', async () => {
  console.log('SIGTERM signal received: gracefully shutting down')
  if (server) {
    server.close(() => {
      console.log('HTTP server closed')
    })
  }
  // Cleanup after server close
})

heroku local automatically sets up the environment based on the contents of the .env file in your local directory. In the top-level directory of your project, the .env file already contains the following:

TIMES=2

If you run the app with heroku local --port 5006 and then open http://localhost:5006/times, you see two numbers generated every time.

To set the config var on Heroku, execute this command.

$ heroku config:set TIMES=2
Setting TIMES and restarting boiling-woodland-52568... done, v5
TIMES: 2

View the config vars that are set using heroku config.

$ heroku config | grep TIMES
TIMES: 2

Add the modified files to the local Git repository.

$ git add .

Commit the changes to the repository.

$ git commit -m "Add /times route"
[main f24757b] Add /times route
 1 file changed, 10 insertions(+)

Deploy the changes to Heroku.

$ git push heroku main

Then visit it by running heroku open times.

Provision a Database

The sample app uses a database. Provision a Heroku Postgres database, an add-on available through the Elements Marketplace. Add-ons are cloud services that provide out-of-the-box additional services for your application, such as logging, monitoring, databases, and more.

$ heroku addons:create heroku-postgresql:essential-0
Creating heroku-postgresql:essential-0 on boiling-woodland-52568... ~$0.007/hour (max $5/month)
Database should be available soon
postgresql-regular-95582 is being created in the background. The app will restart when complete...
Run heroku addons:info postgresql-regular-95582 to check creation progress.
Run heroku addons:docs heroku-postgresql to view documentation.

You can wait for the database to provision by running this command:

$ heroku pg:wait

After that command exits, your Heroku app can access the Postgres database. The DATABASE_URL environment variable stores your credentials, which your app is configured to connect to. You can see all the add-ons provisioned with the addons command:

$ heroku addons

 Add-on                                        Plan         Price         Max Price  State
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 heroku-postgresql (postgresql-regular-95582)  essential-0  ~$0.007/hour  $5/month   created
 └─ as DATABASE

 papertrail (papertrail-tapered-31772)         choklad      free          free       created
 └─ as PAPERTRAIL


The table above shows add-ons and the attachments to the current app (boiling-woodland-52568) or other apps.

Use npm to add node-postgres to your dependencies.

$ npm install pg

added 13 packages, and audited 367 packages in 16s

69 packages are looking for funding
  run `npm fund` for details

19 moderate severity vulnerabilities

To address all issues (including breaking changes), run:
  npm audit fix --force

Run `npm audit` for details.
npm warn install-scripts 2 packages had install scripts blocked because they are not covered by allowScripts:
npm warn install-scripts   @parcel/watcher@2.6.0 (install: node-gyp rebuild)
npm warn install-scripts   unrs-resolver@1.12.2 (postinstall: node postinstall.js)
npm warn install-scripts
npm warn install-scripts Run `npm install-scripts ls` to review, or `npm install-scripts approve <pkg>` to allow.

Edit your index.js file to use this module to connect to the database specified in your DATABASE_URL environment variable. On line 4 of index.js, add:

const { Pool } = require('pg')

const pool = new Pool({
  connectionString: process.env.DATABASE_URL,
  ssl: {
    rejectUnauthorized: false
  }
})

Then, to execute a query against the database, add a new /db route that will return all rows in the test_table table. On line 38 of index.js, add:

app.get('/db', async (req, res) => {
  console.log(`Rendering the results of a database query for route '/db'`)
  try {
    const client = await pool.connect()
    const result = await client.query('SELECT * FROM test_table')
    res.render('pages/db', {
      results: result ? result.rows : null
    })
    client.release()
  } catch (err) {
    console.error(err);
    res.send("Error " + err);
  }
})

Now that we’re connecting to a database, we also want to make sure to release our pool of connections when the app shuts down. After line 74, add the following to the shutdown handler:

  pool.end().then(() => {
    console.log('PG pool closed')
  })

The index.js file should now look like this:

const express = require('express')
const path = require('path')
const cool = require('cool-ascii-faces')
const { Pool } = require('pg')

const pool = new Pool({
  connectionString: process.env.DATABASE_URL,
  ssl: {
    rejectUnauthorized: false
  }
})

const port = process.env.PORT || 5006

const app = express()

app.use(express.static(path.join(__dirname, 'public')))
app.set('views', path.join(__dirname, 'views'))
app.set('view engine', 'ejs')

app.get('/', (req, res) => {
  console.log(`Rendering 'pages/index' for route '/'`)
  res.render('pages/index')
})

app.get('/cool', (req, res) => {
  console.log(`Rendering a cool ascii face for route '/cool'`)
  res.send(cool())
})

app.get('/times', (req, res) => {
  const times = process.env.TIMES || 5
  console.log(`Rendering a count from 1 to ${times} for route '/times'`)
  let result = ''
  for (let i = 1; i <= times; i++) {
    result += i + ' '
  }
  res.send(result)
})

app.get('/db', async (req, res) => {
  console.log(`Rendering the results of a database query for route '/db'`)
  try {
    const client = await pool.connect()
    const result = await client.query('SELECT * FROM test_table')
    res.render('pages/db', {
      results: result ? result.rows : null
    })
    client.release()
  } catch (err) {
    console.error(err);
    res.send("Error " + err);
  }
})

const server = app.listen(port, () => {
  console.log(`Listening on ${port}`)
})

// The number of seconds an idle Keep-Alive connection is kept open. This should be greater than the Heroku Router's
// Keep-Alive idle timeout of 90 seconds:
// - to ensure that the closing of idle connections is always initiated by the router and not the Node.js server
// - to prevent a race condition if the router sends a request to the app just as Node.js is closing the connection
// https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/http-routing#keepalives
// https://nodejs.org/api/http.html#serverkeepalivetimeout
server.keepAliveTimeout = 95 * 1000

process.on('SIGTERM', async () => {
  console.log('SIGTERM signal received: gracefully shutting down')
  if (server) {
    server.close(() => {
      console.log('HTTP server closed')
    })
  }
  pool.end().then(() => {
    console.log('PG pool closed')
  })
  // Cleanup after server close
})

Add the modified files to the local Git repository.

$ git add .

Commit the changes to the repository.

$ git commit -m "Add /db route"
[main ce674f6] Add /db route
 3 files changed, 167 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)

Deploy the changes to Heroku.

$ git push heroku main

If you access /db, you receive an error because there’s no table in the database. Assuming that you have Postgres installed locally, use the heroku pg:psql command to connect to the remote database, create a table, and insert a row.

$ heroku pg:psql -c "create table test_table (id integer, name text); insert into test_table values (1, 'hello database');"
--> Connecting to postgresql-regular-95582
CREATE TABLE
INSERT 0 1

Now when you access your app’s /db route with heroku open db, you see something like:

Read more about Heroku PostgreSQL.

You can use a similar technique to install MongoDB or Redis add-ons.

Delete Your App

Remove the app from your account. We only charge you for the resources you used.

$ heroku apps:destroy

You can confirm that your app is gone with this command:

$ heroku apps --all

Next Steps

You now know how to configure and deploy a Node.js app, view logs, and start a console.

To learn more, see:

• How Heroku Works
• Preparing a Codebase for Heroku Deployment
• Heroku Node.js Documentation