[heroku] How to stop an app on Heroku?

I have an app on Heroku which is being used by few users. However, I notice there are some data issues which i'd like to fix and stop the app in the mean time so users don't enter anything new.

Is there a way to stop the app on heroku rather than destroying it? I see that restart server command is there ...though I don't see anything like 'stop'

This question is related to heroku

The answer is


http://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/maintenance-mode

If you’re deploying a large migration or need to disable access to your application for some length of time, you can use Heroku’s built in maintenance mode. It will serve a static page to all visitors, while still allowing you to run rake tasks or console commands.

$ heroku maintenance:on
Maintenance mode enabled.

and later

$ heroku maintenance:off
Maintenance mode disabled.

To DELETE your Heroku app

This is for those looking to DELETE an app on their Heroku account. Sometimes you end up here when trying to find out how to remove/delete an app.

WARNING: This is irreversible!

  • Go to your Heroku dashboard here
  • Select the app you want to delete.
  • Scroll down to the bottom of the settings page for that app.
  • Press the red Delete app... button.

You can disable the app using enable maintenance mode from the admin panel.

  • Go to settings tabs.
  • In bottom just before deleting the app. enable maintenance mode. see in the screenshot below.

enter image description here


From the Heroku Web

Dashboard => Your App Name => Resources => Pencil icon=> Flip the switch => Confirm

1> Yes... There is pencil icon when we go to Personal==> <app name> ==>Resources then click on Pencil Icon and drag to left side and Dynos will go down.

2> You can validate using Heroku cli

heroku logs --app {your-appname}

it worked for me.


Go to your dashboard on heroku. Select the app. There is a dynos section. Just pull the sliders for the dynos down, (a decrease in dynos is to the left), to the number of dynos you want to be running. The slider goes to 0. Then save your changes. Boom.

According to the comment below: there is a pencil icon that needs to be clicked to accomplish this. I have not checked - but am putting it here in case it helps.


To completely 'stop' your app you can scale the web dynos down to zero which effectively takes all your app http-processes offline.

$ heroku ps:scale web=0
Scaling web processes... done, now running 0

To add to the answers above: if you want to stop Dyno using admin panel, the current solution on free tier:

  1. Open App
  2. In Overview tab, in "Dyno formation" section click on "Configure Dynos"
  3. In the needed row of "Free Dynos" section, click on the pencil icon on the right
  4. Click on the blue on/off control, and then click on "Confirm"

Hope this helps.


You might have to be more specific and specify the app name as well (this is the name of the app as you have it in heroku). For example:

heroku ps:scale web=0 --app myAppName 

Otherwise you might get the following message:

 % heroku ps:scale web=0
Scaling dynos... failed
 !    No app specified.
 !    Run this command from an app folder or specify which app to use with --app APP.

If you are using eclipse plugin, double click on the app-name in My Heroku Applications. In Processes tab, press Scale Button. A small window will pop-up. Increase/decrease the count and just say OK.