Guides / Migrate a Django app from Heroku to your own AWS account with Django Cloud

Peter van Doorn Django Cloud · Checked against Django 4.2 and newer, October 2026

Migrate a Django app from Heroku to your own AWS account with Django Cloud

Moving a Django app off Heroku is mostly three jobs: copy the database, move the settings, and switch the domain. Done in the right order, the site is down for a few minutes at most. This guide shows the order.

Before you start

• Pick the AWS region. For European users, choose a European region.
• Make a list of your Heroku add-ons (Postgres, Redis, email, scheduler). Each needs a replacement.
• Check your project runs outside Heroku: gunicorn in the requirements, ALLOWED_HOSTS and static files configured.

Step 1: export your settings

heroku config --shell -a your-app > heroku.env

Remove Heroku-specific entries (such as DATABASE_URL, which will change) before you reuse the file. Keep the file private and delete it afterwards.

Step 2: deploy the app to the new place, with an empty database

Deploy first and check that the app starts. It is much easier to fix a startup error now than during the final switch.

Step 3: copy the database

heroku maintenance:on -a your-app
heroku pg:backups:capture -a your-app
heroku pg:backups:download -a your-app    # writes latest.dump

Then restore the dump into the new database:

pg_restore --verbose --clean --no-acl --no-owner -d "$NEW_DATABASE_URL" latest.dump

Enabling maintenance mode first stops new writes, so the copy is complete. For a large database, do a test run earlier to learn how long the copy takes.

Step 4: check before you switch

1. Log in, open a few pages and make one harmless edit.
2. Compare row counts of two or three important tables with the old database.
3. Check that emails, file uploads and background jobs work.

Step 5: switch the domain

Lower the DNS TTL a day before, so the change spreads fast. Point the domain at the new app, wait until the certificate is issued, then leave Heroku in maintenance mode for a day as a safety net before you delete it.

Common surprises

• Add-ons you forgot: schedulers, Redis, log drains.
• Uploaded files: Heroku disks are temporary. If your app stored uploads on disk, they are already gone; use object storage.
• The old database URL: make sure nothing, including a cron job, still points at it.

Or skip it

Django Cloud takes your requirements.txt, pyproject.toml or uv.lock as they are, connects a Postgres database to your app, runs migrations before each release and sets up your own domain with a certificate. Deploying is one command.

pip install djangocloud-cli
djangocloud deploy

Get startedSee pricing

Free plans are available for students, AWS Activate startups, open-source, non-profit and research projects. See how Django Cloud compares with other ways to host Django.

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