The Vercel Pricing Trap

Vercel revolutionized frontend deployment. Their DX is incredible. But that “Hobby” tier can quickly become a “Horrible” bill.

The Free Tier Limits

Vercel’s free tier sounds great until you hit:

• 100GB bandwidth/month (a few viral blog posts)
• Serverless function timeout: 10 seconds
• Build minutes: 6,000/month
• Team members: Just you

Where Costs Explode

1. Bandwidth Overages

Vercel charges $40/100GB after your free tier.

Got a successful launch? A single day of traffic can cost hundreds.

2. Serverless Function Costs

Running API routes on Vercel? You pay per invocation:

• $0.40 per million invocations sounds cheap
• But 1,000 users × 50 API calls/day = 1.5M calls/month
• That’s $600/month just for API calls

3. Edge Functions Premium

Want faster responses? Edge Functions cost 2x regular functions.

4. Image Optimization

Using next/image? You get 1,000 free optimizations, then $5/1,000 images.

A content-heavy site can rack up $500+/month just on images.

The Real Monthly Bill

Here’s what a typical SaaS landing page + app costs on Vercel Pro:

Item	Monthly Cost
Pro plan	$20
Extra bandwidth (500GB)	$200
Serverless functions	$150
Image optimization	$100
Total	$470/month

And that’s before you scale.

When Vercel Makes Sense

Vercel is genuinely great for:

• Static marketing sites (under 100GB bandwidth)
• Small personal projects
• Teams with Vercel Enterprise budgets

When It Doesn’t

Think twice if you:

• Have high-traffic applications
• Run lots of API routes
• Need databases, queues, or other backend services

The Alternative

For backend tools and self-hosted applications, InfraPilot offers:

• Predictable pricing: No surprise bills
• Full control: Your infrastructure, your data
• More tools: Not just frontends—databases, analytics, automation

Compare your costs →