What is Vercel?
Vercel is the frontend cloud built by the team behind Next.js. It gives you an edge network, serverless & edge functions, image optimization, and preview deployments tied to Git.
Resources
Short guides, curated links, a glossary and FAQ for Vercel and the surrounding frontend-cloud ecosystem.
Short guides
Vercel vs Netlify
Both host static sites and edge functions. Vercel wins on Next.js DX and ISR; Netlify wins on price for form-heavy sites (Netlify Forms + Identity save real backend work).
Edge vs Serverless Functions
Edge Functions run in V8 isolates at the edge — fast cold start, Web APIs only. Serverless Functions run on AWS Lambda — larger deps, longer runtime, slower cold start.
Reading a status page
A green dot means an endpoint is reachable. It doesn't guarantee build queues, function invocation, or region-specific edge health — those run on internal systems we can't probe from a browser.
Why CORS limits browser checks
Vercel, Netlify, Cloudflare, and Render don't return permissive CORS headers on their auth-protected APIs, so browser checks confirm DNS/TCP/TLS handshake only.
Curated links
Glossary
- Edge Function
- Code that runs at the edge in a V8 isolate — Web APIs only, ~50ms cold start.
- Serverless Function
- AWS Lambda-style function — full Node, longer runtime, slower cold start.
- Edge Middleware
- Code that runs before a request reaches a route; used for auth, rewrites, A/B splits.
- ISR
- Incremental Static Regeneration — rebuild a static page in the background after N seconds.
- PPR
- Partial Prerendering — mix static shell + streaming dynamic content in a single response.
- SSG
- Static Site Generation — HTML built at build time.
- SSR
- Server-Side Rendering — HTML built on every request.
- Preview deployment
- A per-branch or per-PR deploy at a unique URL.
- Cold start
- The first-request latency when a function's runtime isn't already warm.
- Log Drain
- A pipe from Vercel logs into a third-party store (Datadog, Axiom, Logtail).
- Cache tag
- A string used to invalidate a group of cached responses in one call.
- Data Cache
- Vercel's request-level cache layer for fetch() calls; keyed by URL + headers + tags.
- Fast Data Transfer
- Vercel's term for bandwidth served from the edge — the main billed line item at scale.
- Workers
- Cloudflare's V8-isolate edge runtime; Cloudflare Pages Functions are built on it.
- D1
- Cloudflare's SQLite-backed edge database — read-replicated globally, single primary.
- R2
- Cloudflare's S3-compatible object storage — zero egress fees.
- wrangler
- The Cloudflare Workers CLI for local dev, deploys, and secret management.
FAQ
Is Vercel free for personal use?
Yes — the Hobby tier is free for personal, non-commercial projects. Pro is $20/user/month and unlocks team seats and commercial use.
Vercel vs Cloudflare Pages — which is cheaper at scale?
Cloudflare Pages tends to win on raw request pricing (unlimited requests on the free tier). Vercel wins on Next.js-specific features and integrated tooling.
Can I run a Vercel site on my own domain?
Yes. Add the domain in Project Settings → Domains, point A / CNAME records at Vercel, and SSL is auto-provisioned via Let's Encrypt.
Why does my Vercel build succeed locally but fail on Vercel?
Almost always a Node version mismatch, a missing environment variable, or a case-sensitive filename on Linux. See the debugging guide in Learn.
Do you place any traffic through Vercel's servers?
No. vercel.health is read-only — we run public reachability checks from your browser and link out to each platform.