What is Vercel?
Frontend cloud platform created by Next.js's authors. Hosts Next.js, React, Svelte, Vue, and most modern frontends with global edge CDN.
Vercel is the cloud platform built by the team behind Next.js. It's the canonical deployment target for Next.js — every Next feature lands there first and is tuned for the platform. What you get: instant global deploys via git push, an edge CDN spanning 100+ regions, serverless functions, Edge Functions, OG image generation, KV/Postgres/Blob storage, image optimization, web analytics, and preview deploys per pull request. Free tier covers most personal projects and early-stage SaaS (100 GB bandwidth, 6,000 function invocations per day). Paid plans (Pro $20/mo per seat) unlock more bandwidth, longer function timeouts, and team features. Alternatives: Cloudflare Pages + Workers, Netlify, AWS Amplify, self-hosting on a VPS via Docker. For Next.js specifically, Vercel is usually the path of least friction — though the lock-in is real, and self-hosting Next.js on Cloudflare or AWS is fully supported.