Hobby dynos are real dynos. :) Professional dynos, like the new `standard-1x` will have scale-out, Heroku Metrics, preboot, and mix with other dyno types: all features we have found are most useful for apps at scale.

We hope that between the new `free` and `hobby` dynos you should have good choices that support almost any personal or small scale professional app you might want to build.

So hobby dynos should be able to run the same type of application as a 1x dyno, just with fewer other features more or less?

I have a small scale web application (around 5K pageviews per day) that runs very well on the one free web dyno currently offered. (We do have costs for the DB and SSL). I assume in the next few months I'll have to move it to either a hobby or 1x dyno. Obviously I'd rather move it to the hobby one because I don't need an additional $220 or so cost per year. It would be great to have a few more details on the site about the specs behind the free and hobby dynos!

A real dyno costs $34. So in essence, they're replacing the 24h free tier with an 18h free tier, but lowering the cost of the first paid dyno to $7. At least that's how I'm reading it...

They also lowered the cost of that 1x dyno in the Pro tier, and if I'm reading correctly that $7 actually buys you two full-time dynos (but only one of them can be web, the other has to be a background worker.)

You can use both 1x web and 1x worker in the free tier too, as long as you abide by the new policy of sleeping 6 hours.

I hadn't considered that interpretation, but it's less confusing than mine:

My initial suspicion was that since the hobby dyno has "10 process types", I would think the "1 web, 1 worker" restriction for the free dyno is just another way of saying "2 process types". But would that mean the worker is prorated up to an additional $7/mo?

I think this could be cleared up on the pricing page.

For sure.

My interpretation is $7/mo buys you two dynos, but not more than one web type, and this seems to be consistent with what the heroku rep here in this discussion seems to be saying. (eg. comments that Free tier actually potentially gets more compute time under this arrangement)

But it's not at all clear on further reflection (that if you do choose to do this 2-dyno 1 web, 1 worker arrangement on the hobby tier, you don't wind up paying $14/mo rather than the total of $7/mo). I think that's what it says, but I'm not at all sure.

Ah. The e-mail clears it up:

Hobby — Run a small app 24x7 with the Heroku developer experience for $7 per dyno per month. Multiple worker process types for more complex apps. Run a maximum of one dyno per process type. 512 MB RAM.