Vercel hosts front-ends and serverless/edge functions with zero-config deploys from Git. The free Hobby plan covers personal projects; Pro is $20 per user per month for commercial use. The part that surprises teams is the metered usage on top — here's the full picture.
| Plan | Price | Includes | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hobby free | $0 | Non-commercial; 1M edge req/mo, 100GB transfer, 1M fn invocations | Side projects, demos |
| Pro | $20/user/mo | Commercial use + $20 usage credit included, then metered | Startups, small teams |
| Enterprise | custom | SLA, SSO, isolation, support | Large orgs |
Pro overage is metered per unit: edge/CDN bandwidth, serverless & edge function invocations and duration (GB-hours), image optimization, and build minutes.
→ Bandwidth is the usual surprise — model data transfer out on the cloud egress cost calculator, and your full monthly stack on the API stack calculator.
Yes. The Hobby plan is free and surprisingly capable: automatic HTTPS, global CDN, preview deploys per Git branch, and serverless functions — fine for portfolios, prototypes and low-traffic sites. The catch is that Hobby is non-commercial; the moment a project makes money or represents a business, Vercel expects you on Pro. There's no free commercial tier.
1. Sign in at vercel.com (you can sign up with GitHub, GitLab or Bitbucket).
2. Open Account Settings → Tokens.
3. Click Create, name the token, choose a scope (account or team) and an expiry, then copy it once.
4. Use it as a Bearer token against api.vercel.com, or just run the Vercel CLI (vercel) which handles auth for deploys.
Quick API test (list your projects):
Bandwidth is the classic one — a page that goes viral, or large unoptimized assets, can blow past the included transfer and meter fast. Image optimization is billed per source image, so a big gallery costs more than you'd think. Function duration (GB-hours) matters for slow API routes, and per-seat pricing means every team member adds $20/month. For static-heavy sites, a CDN like Cloudflare Pages can be cheaper at scale.
For front-end hosting, Cloudflare Pages and Netlify are the main rivals — Pages in particular has very cheap bandwidth. For serverless backends, Supabase edge functions or a small VPS can undercut per-seat pricing once a team grows. Vercel's edge is best when you value zero-config deploys and the Next.js integration.
The Hobby plan is free for non-commercial projects. Commercial use needs Pro at $20/user/month plus metered usage.
Metered overage — bandwidth, function invocations/duration, image optimization and build minutes — on top of the per-seat base. Model traffic before launch.
vercel.com → Account Settings → Tokens → Create. Scope it, set an expiry, copy once, use as a Bearer token or via the CLI.
No — Hobby is non-commercial. Business or revenue-generating projects need Pro.
Not affiliated with Vercel. Prices are reference estimates — always verify on the official pricing page.