diff --git a/docs/config.rst b/docs/config.rst
index 9776e9d24..ddf722cab 100644
--- a/docs/config.rst
+++ b/docs/config.rst
@@ -26,7 +26,7 @@ Optional settings
     Using a thread to send events will be adequate for truly parallel Ruby platforms such as JRuby, though the benefit on MRI/CRuby will be limited. Threads also won't report any exceptions raised inside of them, so be careful!
 
     If the async callback raises an exception, Raven will attempt to send synchronously.
-    
+
     We recommend creating a background job, using your background job processor, that will send Sentry notifications in the background. Rather than enqueuing an entire Raven::Event object, we recommend providing the Hash representation of an event as a job argument. Here's an example for ActiveJob:
 
     .. code-block:: ruby
@@ -156,9 +156,9 @@ Optional settings
 
     We guess the release intelligently in the following order of preference:
 
-    * Heroku's HEROKU_SLUG_COMMIT environment variable
-    * Reading from the REVISION file in the app root
     * Commit SHA of the last commit (git)
+    * Reading from the REVISION file in the app root
+    * Heroku's dyno metadata (must have enabled via Heroku Labs)
 
     .. code-block:: ruby
 
diff --git a/lib/raven/configuration.rb b/lib/raven/configuration.rb
index daba2092b..bbc412ca7 100644
--- a/lib/raven/configuration.rb
+++ b/lib/raven/configuration.rb
@@ -267,15 +267,24 @@ def project_root=(root_dir)
     end
 
     def detect_release
-      detect_release_from_heroku ||
+      detect_release_from_git ||
         detect_release_from_capistrano ||
-        detect_release_from_git
+        detect_release_from_heroku
     end
 
     private
 
     def detect_release_from_heroku
-      ENV['HEROKU_SLUG_COMMIT']
+      sys_dyno_info = `cat /etc/heroku/dyno` rescue nil
+      return unless sys_dyno_info && sys_dyno_info != ""
+
+      # being overly cautious, because if we raise an error Raven won't start
+      begin
+        hash = JSON.parse(sys_dyno_info)
+        hash && hash["release"] && hash["release"]["commit"]
+      rescue JSON::JSONError
+        logger.error "Cannot parse Heroku JSON: #{sys_dyno_info}"
+      end
     end
 
     def detect_release_from_capistrano