Vercel pricing (2026): is Vercel free, and what does $20 Pro actually cover?
updated ยท prices checked on vendor pages
quick answer: Vercel pricing, as of oct 31, 2026: Hobby is $0 but it's for personal, non-commercial use only, with hard usage caps. Pro is $20 a month per developer seat and includes $20 of usage credit, then you pay as you go for usage beyond the included amounts. Enterprise is custom. so a solo dev on Pro starts at $20; a team of three deploying code starts at $60, before usage.
Vercel is #2 of 5 on our backend, database & deploy board (8.5/10), and it's there because it's the nicest way going to ship a Next.js front end with ai routes: push to git, get a preview per branch, and functions that bill active CPU rather than time spent waiting on a model. the catch is in the first paragraph: Hobby is for hobbies.
the plans
as of oct 31, 2026, from Vercel's pricing page:
| plan | price | what you get |
|---|---|---|
| Hobby | $0/mo | personal, non-commercial projects. 1 developer seat, fixed monthly usage caps, no way to buy more usage |
| Pro | $20/mo per developer seat | $20 of included usage credit, pay as you go beyond the included amounts, unlimited viewer seats, 1 billing seat, team-level roles, 1 custom environment |
| Enterprise | custom | custom limits, audit logs, SAML SSO and directory sync included, SSO-protected previews, 12 custom environments |
prices are in USD and exclude VAT, GST and other taxes.
is Vercel free?
yes, for side projects. on Hobby you get git deploys (automatic CI/CD), the CDN, HTTPS and functions at $0. you don't even need an account for a first go: vercel deploy --temporary deploys a project and returns a URL, which expires unless you claim it to a Hobby account. the limits that matter:
- non-commercial only. Vercel says Hobby is for personal, non-commercial use. a paid product, a client site or your startup belongs on Pro.
- hard caps, no top-ups. on Hobby you can't buy extra usage. you get the caps and that's it.
- the monthly allowance: 1M CDN requests, 100 GB of fast data transfer, 4 hours of function active CPU, 360 GB-hours of provisioned memory, 1M function invocations, 1 GB of blob storage.
- 1 hour of runtime logs. debugging a Hobby function after breakfast for a bug from last night: not happening.
what Pro really costs
on Pro you pay $20 per developer seat, and the $20 of included credit goes on usage. on top of that, Pro includes bigger monthly amounts before anything is charged, then usage starts at:
the table: what Pro really costs
| resource | Hobby | included on Pro | on Pro after that |
|---|---|---|---|
| CDN requests | 1M / month | 10M / month | from $2 per 1M |
| fast data transfer | 100 GB / month | 1 TB / month | from $0.15 per GB |
| function active CPU | 4 hours / month | not listed | from $0.128 per hour |
| function provisioned memory | 360 GB-hrs / month | not listed | from $0.0106 per GB-hr |
| function invocations | 1M / month | not listed | from $0.60 per 1M |
| build minutes (basic machines) | included | not listed | $0.007 per minute |
| blob storage | 1 GB / month | not listed | $0.023 per GB |
the rest of the sheet is the same idea: image optimisation, ISR reads and writes, Vercel Sandbox, workflows and queues all have a Hobby allowance and a per-unit Pro rate. faster build machines cost more per minute ($0.014 to $0.105).
waiting on a model is cheap. functions run on Fluid compute, which bills CPU only while your code is actively executing (memory is billed separately), so a chat route that spends most of its life waiting on an LLM response isn't paying CPU for the wait. that's the main reason we rank it for ai front ends.
the add-ons that sneak up on a team: SAML SSO is $300 a month on Pro, password-protecting a project is $20 per project a month, static IPs are $100 per project a month, a HIPAA BAA is $350 a month, and a custom preview deployment suffix is $100 a month. web analytics plus and the observability plus add-on are extra too.
can you cap the bill?
yes. Vercel says every new team gets a default on-demand usage budget of $200 (you can change it), with email, web and SMS alerts as you approach it, and you can optionally set it to pause all projects when you hit 100%. otherwise usage on Pro is uncapped, so set the hard limit before your side project lands on the front page of anything.
the ai bits
- AI Gateway: on every plan, including Hobby, with bring your own key, fallbacks, load balancing and spend monitoring.
- Vercel Sandbox: for running code your agent wrote. 5 hours of active CPU a month on Hobby with 10 concurrent sandboxes, 10K concurrent on Pro.
- v0 isn't included. it's a paid add-on on Pro and Enterprise, billed on its own. see v0 pricing.
Vercel vs the other places to put your app
- the backend to pair it with: Supabase, #1 (9.0/10) for Postgres, auth and storage in one. see Supabase pricing
- serverless Postgres that scales to zero: Neon, #4 (8.0/10)
- a TypeScript-first backend: Convex, #5 (7.5/10)
- a long-running server or worker: see Vercel vs Railway
the rest of the field
the table: the rest of the field
| rank | tool | best for | free tier | paid from | numptr score |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| #2 | Vercel | front ends and serverless ai routes | Hobby $0 (personal, non-commercial) | Pro $20/mo including $20 usage credit | 8.5/10 |
| #1 | Supabase | full-stack ai apps needing auth and vectors | 500 MB DB, 50K MAU; pauses after 1 week inactive; limit of 2 active projects | Pro from $25/mo | 9.0/10 |
| #4 | Neon | spiky workloads, per-PR database branches | 100 projects, 100 CU-hours per project, no credit card | Launch: usage-based, $0.106/CU-hour + $0.35/GB-month | 8.0/10 |
| #5 | Convex | TypeScript devs wanting realtime sync | free & Starter: $0 then pay as you go | Professional $25/developer/mo | 7.5/10 |
faq
is Vercel free?
the Hobby plan is $0, for personal, non-commercial projects, with fixed monthly usage caps and no way to buy more. commercial projects need Pro.
how much is Vercel Pro?
$20 a month per developer seat, with $20 of included usage credit. viewer seats are unlimited and free. usage beyond the included amounts is pay as you go.
can i use Vercel Hobby for a commercial project?
no. Vercel says Hobby is for personal, non-commercial use. move to Pro from the dashboard.
what happens if i go over Vercel's limits?
on Hobby you're limited to the caps and can't buy more. on Pro you pay as you go, and the default $200 on-demand budget sends alerts and can pause your projects at 100% if you turn that on.
is v0 included in Vercel Pro?
no. v0 is a paid add-on on Pro and Enterprise. see v0 pricing.
tools in this guide
sources
checked 2026-10-31
- Vercel pricing and faq (Hobby $0, Pro $20/mo, Enterprise custom, developer seat $20/month, viewer seats unlimited, billing seat, Hobby personal non-commercial use, $20 Pro included credit, Hobby can't buy additional usage, Pro pay as you go uncapped, CDN requests, fast data transfer, fluid active CPU, provisioned memory, invocations, build minutes, blob, runtime logs, SSO $300/month, password protection, static IPs, HIPAA BAA, preview deployment suffix, $200 default on-demand budget with alerts and optional pause, AI Gateway, Vercel Sandbox, v0 paid add-on, temporary deploys, taxes excluded): https://vercel.com/pricing
- ranks, scores, verdicts and plans: numptr data/tools.json (backend, database & deploy board)