Vercel pricing looks simple on the surface (free Hobby plan, $20/month Pro plan) until you start asking what “free” actually includes. This guide breaks down the real numbers as of July 2026: bandwidth, function limits, the commercial-use rule that trips up more people than any bandwidth cap, and what Pro actually bills once you’re past the free tier.
Vercel pricing at a glance
Here’s the full comparison before the details. All figures below come from Vercel’s own documentation as of July 2026.
| Hobby | Pro | Enterprise | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | $20/month per seat (1 seat included, +$20/mo each additional) | Custom |
| Fast Data Transfer | 100 GB/month | 1 TB/month included, then on demand | Custom |
| Edge requests | Up to 1,000,000/month | 10,000,000/month included, then on demand | Custom |
| Function invocations | Up to 1,000,000/month | Usage-based ($0.60 per 1M after credit) | Custom |
| Function max duration | 300 seconds | 300s default, configurable higher | Up to 900 seconds |
| Build time per deployment | 45 minutes | 45 minutes | 45 minutes |
| Deployments per day | 100 | 6,000 | Custom |
| Commercial use | Not allowed | Allowed | Allowed |
| Support | Community only | Email support | Dedicated support, SLA |
The Hobby column is generous on paper. The line that actually decides whether you can use it, though, is “commercial use”, and it’s easy to miss because it isn’t a number.
Is Vercel free?
Yes, in the sense that matters for most people asking this question: the Hobby plan costs nothing, has no time limit, and doesn’t require a credit card. You get a real production-grade deployment, automatic HTTPS, a .vercel.app subdomain, and a genuinely useful set of included resources.
What “free” doesn’t mean here is “free for anything.” Vercel’s Hobby plan is explicitly scoped to personal, non-commercial projects. That’s a policy restriction, not a technical one, and it’s the single most important thing to understand before you build on Hobby and plan to launch something that makes money.
Beyond that policy line, the technical allowances on Hobby are solid for a side project, a personal blog, a portfolio, or a learning sandbox: 100 GB of Fast Data Transfer, a million function invocations, a million edge requests, and 4 CPU hours of Active CPU time each month. For a low-traffic personal site, you’d need a fairly unusual spike in traffic to bump into any of these.
Bandwidth and data transfer limits
A useful Vercel deployment lives or dies on how it moves data, and the Hobby plan gives you two separate transfer categories to track, not one.
Fast Data Transfer covers the bytes your site sends to visitors, HTML, CSS, JS, images, and any static assets served through Vercel’s CDN. Hobby includes up to 100 GB per month. Pro includes a much larger 1 TB per month, after which Vercel bills on demand at a regional rate, roughly $0.15 to $0.35 per GB depending on where the traffic originates.
Fast Origin Transfer is a smaller, separate allowance covering data that moves between your origin and Vercel’s edge, relevant mainly for dynamic responses and server-rendered content rather than static files. Hobby includes up to 10 GB per month. This one is easy to overlook because it’s not the number most people search for, but it’s a real, distinct ceiling.
Edge requests are the third figure worth tracking: Hobby includes up to 1,000,000 requests per month, while Pro includes 10 million before on-demand billing kicks in at roughly $2.00 to $3.20 per million requests.
For a static site with modest traffic, none of these three numbers are likely to bind. They start to matter once you’re serving large media files, running a site that suddenly gets shared widely, or building something with a genuinely high volume of visitors.
Function and build limits on Hobby
Vercel’s whole platform is built around serverless functions, so the function-related limits matter even if you don’t think of your project as “using functions” directly. Frameworks like Next.js create functions automatically for server-rendered routes, API endpoints, and middleware.
On Hobby, you get up to 1,000,000 function invocations per month, 4 CPU hours of Active CPU, and 360 GB-hours of Provisioned Memory. Function duration currently maxes out at 300 seconds (5 minutes) on Hobby, which is generous for most workloads; Pro defaults to the same 300 seconds but lets you configure longer durations, up to 30 minutes in beta.
Build limits are separate from runtime limits. Every deployment gets up to 45 minutes to complete its build step on both Hobby and Pro, though Hobby build machines get 2 vCPUs and 8 GB of memory, while Pro can use larger “Turbo” build machines with up to 30 vCPUs. Hobby also caps you at 100 deployments per day and 1 concurrent deployment, meaning a second deploy has to wait for the first to finish. Pro raises that to 6,000 deployments per day and up to 500 concurrent builds.
The commercial-use restriction (read this first)
This is the gotcha that catches more people than any bandwidth or function cap: Vercel’s Hobby plan is restricted to non-commercial, personal use only, according to Vercel’s own fair use guidelines.
The definition is broader than most people expect. Vercel defines commercial usage as any deployment used for the financial gain of anyone involved in any part of building it, including a paid freelancer or consultant writing the code, not just the site owner. Examples Vercel lists explicitly include:
- Requesting or processing payment from site visitors
- Advertising the sale of a product or service
- Being paid to create, update, or host the site
- Running affiliate links as the primary purpose of the site
- Including advertisements, such as Google AdSense
- Accepting donations (Vercel calls this out specifically as commercial usage, even though it feels informal)
That last one surprises a lot of hobbyists. A personal blog with a “buy me a coffee” button, under Vercel’s own definition, has crossed into commercial territory and needs a Pro plan.
If you’re building a restaurant site, a freelance portfolio meant to land paid work, a small business landing page, or anything with a payment link, checkout flow, or paid promotion baked in, the Hobby plan isn’t technically compliant, regardless of how little traffic the site gets. That’s worth knowing before you build, not after a support email arrives.
What happens when you exceed the limits
The Hobby and Pro plans behave completely differently once you cross a threshold, and that difference is worth understanding before you pick one.
On Hobby, there’s no bill, because there’s no billing at all. If you exceed a usage limit, the typical outcome is that the specific feature pauses until roughly 30 days have passed and your usage resets. Some resources have shorter pause windows; Web Analytics collection, for example, pauses after its grace period and resumes after just 7 days. Nothing gets shut down permanently for a one-time spike, but the feature stops working until the reset.
On Pro, exceeding your included usage and $20 monthly credit doesn’t pause anything. Instead, Vercel automatically switches your team to on-demand billing for whatever resource you’ve exceeded, and you’ll start receiving daily and weekly usage summary emails. Vercel notifies you at 75% of your monthly credit, and by default enables a spend management alert at $200 per billing cycle, though you can configure your own thresholds.
The practical difference: Hobby overages cost you availability, temporarily. Pro overages cost you money, automatically, with no hard stop unless you configure spend limits yourself.
Vercel Pro pricing: what you actually pay
Pro pricing has three moving parts: a flat platform fee, seats, and usage. It’s worth walking through a concrete example rather than just listing the numbers.
The platform fee is $20 per month, and it includes one deploying seat (the person who can configure and deploy projects) and $20 in monthly usage credit that applies across billable resources like Fast Data Transfer, function invocations, and Active CPU. That credit expires and resets each billing cycle; unused credit doesn’t roll over.
Additional deploying seats cost $20/month each. Viewer seats, which are read-only and can comment on previews but can’t deploy or configure anything, are free and unlimited. A two-person team where both people need to deploy is $40/month before any usage.
Included usage on top of the credit: 1 TB of Fast Data Transfer and 10 million edge requests per month are included outright, separate from the dollar credit. Once you’re past both the included allowances and the $20 credit, Vercel bills the difference: roughly $0.60 per million function invocations, $0.128 per Active CPU hour (starting rate, varies by region), and $0.15 to $0.35 per GB of additional Fast Data Transfer.
A rough example: a solo freelancer running a Next.js site for a client, with moderate traffic and a handful of API routes, might stay entirely within the $20 platform fee and included allowances most months, landing at $20/month total. A small team of three deploying seats with a database-backed app and some traffic spikes could realistically land between $60 and $150/month once seats and modest on-demand usage are added in. The variability is the point: Pro pricing scales with what you actually use, for better or worse.
How to stay on the free tier
Most projects that fit Hobby’s intended use case (a personal site, a learning project, a portfolio that isn’t actively soliciting paid work) never come close to its technical limits. A few habits help keep it that way.
Know whether your project counts as commercial before you build it. This is the limit that actually matters. If there’s any payment link, paid promotion, donation button, or ad slot planned, budget for Pro from the start rather than discovering the restriction after launch.
A plain static site (no server rendering, no API routes) barely touches Hobby’s function-based limits at all. If your project is HTML, CSS, and JavaScript with no backend logic, you’re mostly just consuming Fast Data Transfer, not function invocations or Active CPU, which makes the free tier’s ceiling very hard to hit.
Compress and lazy-load media. Large, uncompressed images and video are the fastest way to burn through the 100 GB Fast Data Transfer allowance, especially if a page gets shared widely.
Watch build frequency during active development. Hobby allows 1 concurrent deployment and up to 100 per day, which is rarely a problem for a solo project but can bind if you’re pushing very frequently while iterating.
Keep an eye on function duration and invocation count if you add server-side features. A site that starts as static and later adds an API route or server-rendered pages picks up a whole new set of limits it wasn’t subject to before.
When Vercel stops being the right tool
Vercel is genuinely strong for what it’s built for: Next.js applications, server-rendered apps, and projects that need edge functions, API routes, or preview deployments tied to a Git workflow. If that’s your project, the limits above are reasonable and the platform earns its complexity.
Where it starts to feel like overkill is a specific, common case: a plain static site, a portfolio, a landing page, or a single HTML export from an AI builder, with no server logic at all. Vercel’s entire pricing and limits structure (function invocations, Active CPU, provisioned memory) is built around workloads that a static site simply doesn’t generate, and the commercial-use restriction on Hobby means the moment your static portfolio starts landing paid client work, you’re technically expected to upgrade to a plan priced for a much bigger workload than yours.
For that specific case, a drag-and-drop static host is usually a simpler fit. Supadrop skips the function infrastructure entirely: you drop a folder, get a live URL in seconds, and unlimited bandwidth is included on every paid plan starting at $5/month, with no commercial-use restriction to track and no usage-based billing to monitor. It’s not a replacement for a Next.js application with real server-side logic, but if your deliverable is a static folder, it removes an entire category of limits you’d otherwise need to think about. Our GitHub Pages limits guide covers a similar comparison for a fully free alternative, and our Vercel alternatives roundup covers the broader field if you need something between the two. For the widest view, our best free website hosting sites comparison puts Vercel’s free tier next to every other kind of free plan.
Vercel’s free tier is genuinely useful for personal projects, with real bandwidth, real function capacity, and no time limit. The number that actually decides whether Hobby works for you isn’t bandwidth or invocations, it’s whether your project counts as commercial. Get that answer right before you build, and the rest of the limits rarely get in the way.
Frequently asked questions
Is Vercel free?
Yes, Vercel’s Hobby plan is free with no time limit. It includes 100 GB of Fast Data Transfer, 1 million function invocations, and 1 million edge requests per month, according to Vercel’s own plan documentation.
The catch isn’t a hidden fee, it’s scope: Hobby is restricted to personal, non-commercial projects. Anything tied to payment, advertising, or paid work needs a Pro or Enterprise plan.
Is Vercel free for commercial use?
No. Vercel’s fair use guidelines state that Hobby teams are restricted to non-commercial personal use only. Commercial usage covers any deployment tied to financial gain for anyone involved in the project, including a paid consultant writing the code.
That definition is broader than most people assume: it explicitly includes accepting payment, running ads, affiliate links, and even accepting donations. Commercial projects need the Pro plan, which starts at $20/month per seat.
What are the Vercel free tier limits?
The Hobby plan includes 100 GB of Fast Data Transfer, up to 10 GB of Fast Origin Transfer, 1 million function invocations, 4 CPU hours of Active CPU, 1 million edge requests, a 45-minute build time cap, 100 deployments per day, and a 100 MB static file upload limit through the CLI.
Function duration on Hobby currently maxes out at 300 seconds (5 minutes). See the full comparison table above for how these stack up against Pro.
What happens if I exceed Vercel free tier limits?
Hobby has no billing at all, so exceeding a limit doesn’t generate a bill. Instead, the affected feature typically pauses for about 30 days until usage resets. Some resources reset faster, like Web Analytics collection, which resumes after 7 days.
On Pro, exceeding your included usage and $20 monthly credit doesn’t pause anything, it switches your team to on-demand billing automatically, with usage summary emails and a default spend alert at $200 per billing cycle.
How much does Vercel Pro cost?
Vercel Pro costs $20/month for the platform fee, which includes one deploying seat and $20 of monthly usage credit. Additional deploying seats are $20/month each, while viewer (read-only) seats are free and unlimited.
On top of the credit, Pro includes 1 TB of Fast Data Transfer and 10 million edge requests per month before on-demand rates apply. A small team with moderate traffic often lands somewhere between $20 and $150/month depending on seats and usage. Our Vercel alternatives guide breaks down how that compares to flat-rate competitors.
Is Vercel good for static websites?
Vercel can host static websites, but its entire limits structure (function invocations, Active CPU, provisioned memory) is built for Next.js applications and server-rendered projects, not plain HTML and CSS.
A single static site or landing page barely touches that infrastructure, which means you’re paying for (and thinking about) limits your project doesn’t actually need. For that specific case, a dedicated static host like Supadrop or the options in our GitHub Pages limits guide is usually a simpler, cheaper fit.