Vercel Pricing in 2026: Complete Breakdown and When to Consider Alternatives

Vercel has become the default deployment platform for Next.js applications, but as projects scale, costs can surprise even experienced teams. Let's break down exactly what you'll pay and explore when alternatives make sense.

Vercel Pricing Tiers (2026)

Hobby (Free)

• Personal projects only (no commercial use)
• 100GB bandwidth/month
• 6,000 Edge Function invocations
• 100 GB-hours serverless function execution
• Limited build minutes

Pro ($20/user/month)

• Commercial use allowed
• 1TB bandwidth (then $0.15/GB)
• 1M Edge Function invocations (then $0.60/million)
• 1,000 GB-hours serverless (then $0.18/GB-hour)
• More build minutes, team features

Enterprise (Custom)

• SLAs, dedicated support
• Custom limits and pricing
• Advanced security features

Where Costs Spike

Edge Function Overages

If you're using Edge Runtime for middleware, ISR revalidation, or API routes, invocations add up fast. A moderately popular site can easily exceed 1M calls.

Example: 5M monthly edge invocations = $2.40 in overages (seems small, but compound with other factors).

Serverless Function Duration

Long-running functions—database queries, external API calls, image processing—consume GB-hours quickly.

Example: 10,000 daily function calls averaging 500ms at 1GB = 150 GB-hours/day = 4,500 GB-hours/month = $630 in overages.

Bandwidth Costs

Media-heavy sites or applications serving large assets can blow through the 1TB allowance.

Example: A video site serving 5TB/month = $600 in bandwidth overages.

Build Minutes

Monorepos and large codebases can exhaust build minutes, though this is less common than execution costs.

Real Cost Scenarios

Solo SaaS

• Traffic: 10K daily visitors
• Architecture: Edge middleware, serverless API routes, ISR
• Estimated: $20 base + $0-50 overages = $20-70/month

Growing Startup

• Traffic: 100K daily visitors
• Architecture: Heavy serverless, real-time features, media
• Estimated: $60 (3 seats) + $200-800 overages = $260-860/month

Scale-up

• Traffic: 1M+ daily visitors
• Reality: Enterprise pricing negotiation required, often $2K-10K+/month

Vercel Alternatives Worth Considering

Cloudflare Pages + Workers

Pros:

• Generous free tier (100K Workers requests/day)
• Pay-as-you-go pricing typically 50-70% cheaper
• Built-in DDoS protection
• Global edge network

Cons:

• Next.js support via adapter (not native)
• Less integrated developer experience
• More configuration required

Best for: Cost-sensitive teams comfortable with some setup.

Railway

Pros:

• Simple, predictable pricing ($5/seat + usage)
• Excellent DX with instant deploys
• PostgreSQL, Redis built-in
• Good monorepo support

Cons:

• Less edge computing focus
• Smaller ecosystem than Vercel

Best for: Teams wanting simplicity without edge-heavy architectures.

Netlify

Pros:

• Similar DX to Vercel
• Competitive pricing on some workloads
• Strong Jamstack heritage

Cons:

• Next.js support historically behind Vercel
• Serverless pricing can also spike

Best for: Gatsby, static-heavy sites, or teams already invested in Netlify.

Self-hosting on Fly.io or Render

Pros:

• Full control over infrastructure
• Can be dramatically cheaper at scale
• No serverless cold starts

Cons:

• More operational burden
• Need to manage scaling yourself
• No automatic framework optimizations

Best for: Teams with DevOps expertise who want cost control.

When to Stay on Vercel

Despite cost concerns, Vercel is worth it when:

1. Next.js is core to your product: The integration and optimization are unmatched
2. Developer productivity matters most: Time saved > server costs
3. Preview deployments are critical: Vercel's preview system is best-in-class
4. You're pre-scale: Free and $20 tiers are genuinely generous for small projects

Cost Optimization Tips

Use Static When Possible

Static pages are free. Don't use serverless for content that could be static.

Optimize Edge Middleware

Middleware runs on every request. Keep it minimal or move logic server-side.

Cache Aggressively

Use ISR with appropriate revalidation times. Every cache hit saves execution costs.

Monitor Usage

Vercel's dashboard shows usage in real-time. Set up alerts before you hit overages.

Consider Hybrid

Host your main site on Vercel, move heavy backend operations to a traditional server.

Conclusion

Vercel's pricing is fair for most projects, but costs can escalate quickly without careful architecture. For many teams, the productivity benefits justify the premium. For others, especially those at scale, Cloudflare Workers or Railway offer compelling alternatives.

Start with Vercel's excellent DX, monitor your usage carefully, and optimize or migrate if costs become unsustainable.