March 29, 2026 (2w ago)
Written by Temps Team
Last updated March 29, 2026 (2w ago)
Vercel Pro costs $20 per seat per month according to Vercel's pricing page. A five-person team pays $100/month before a single visitor hits the site. Add bandwidth overages at $0.15/GB after 1TB, serverless function charges, and image optimization fees, and bills climb quickly. One developer was famously billed $46,485 after a traffic spike on a static site -- an extreme case, but a cautionary one.
So what are the actual alternatives? The self-hosting market is projected to grow from $15.6 billion to $85.2 billion by 2034 (Market.us, 2025). Developers aren't just complaining about Vercel pricing on Reddit anymore -- they're migrating. This guide compares ten Vercel alternatives across pricing, Next.js support, features, and honest trade-offs. Every price figure comes from official sources, checked in March 2026.
Related: Complete Vercel pricing breakdown for 2026
TL;DR: Vercel Pro's $20/seat/month pricing pushes a 5-person team past $100/mo before usage charges. Self-hosted alternatives like Temps cost ~$6/mo total with no per-seat fees, plus built-in analytics, error tracking, and session replay. Managed alternatives like Railway and Render start at $5/mo but add up fast with databases and team seats.
Vercel's per-seat pricing is the most common pain point. At $20/seat/month per Vercel's pricing page, a 10-person team pays $200/month just for platform access -- before any compute, bandwidth, or add-on charges. The September 2025 restructuring helped by including a $20 spending credit, but didn't eliminate the fundamental per-seat model.
Vendor lock-in is a growing concern. Features like Vercel's Edge Middleware, Image Optimization API, and @vercel/analytics tie your code to their platform. Moving a mature Next.js project off Vercel often means rewriting middleware handlers, swapping image pipelines, and replacing analytics integrations. That switching cost grows with every deploy.
Data sovereignty matters too. The GDPR enforcement tracker shows over EUR 5.9 billion in total fines since 2018 (CMS Law, 2026). Teams in regulated industries -- healthcare, finance, government -- increasingly need infrastructure they control. Vercel's Enterprise tier offers data residency options, but at roughly $45,000/year median according to Vendr's buyer guide, it's out of reach for most startups.
But is self-hosting right for everyone? Not necessarily. Let's look at the full spectrum.
Related: How to migrate from Vercel to self-hosted
[INTERNAL-LINK: Vercel pricing gotchas → /blog/vercel-pricing-complete-guide-2026]
| Platform | Type | Next.js Support | Starting Price | Per-Seat Cost | Built-in Analytics | Best For |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Temps | Self-Hosted PaaS | Full SSR/ISR | ~$6/mo (VPS) | Free | Yes (+ error tracking, replay) | All-in-one self-hosted |
| Coolify | Self-Hosted PaaS | Docker-based | ~$5/mo (VPS) | Free | No | App marketplace fans |
| Railway | Managed Cloud | Full SSR | $5/mo + usage | $0 (usage-based) | No | Quick full-stack deploys |
| Render | Managed Cloud | Full SSR | $0 (free tier) | $0 (usage-based) | No | Heroku refugees |
| Netlify | Managed Cloud | Partial (adapter) | $0 (free tier) | $19/mo (Pro) | $9/mo add-on | Static-first JAMstack |
| Cloudflare Pages | Edge Cloud | Partial (OpenNext) | $0 (free tier) | $0 (5 seats free) | Basic (free) | Static + edge functions |
| Fly.io | Managed Cloud | Full SSR (Docker) | $0 (free tier) | $0 (usage-based) | No | Global edge containers |
| DigitalOcean App Platform | Managed Cloud | Full SSR | $5/mo | $0 (flat pricing) | No | Simple managed hosting |
| AWS Amplify | Managed Cloud | Full SSR | Pay-per-use | IAM-based | No | AWS-native teams |
| Docker + VPS | Self-Hosted DIY | Full SSR | ~$4/mo (VPS) | Free | No | Maximum control |
The key difference: managed platforms charge per seat or per usage, while self-hosted options charge only for infrastructure. A $6/month Hetzner VPS handles what would cost $100-500/month on managed platforms for a 5-person team.
[IMAGE: Comparison chart showing monthly cost by team size across all 10 platforms -- Vercel alternatives pricing comparison chart 2026]
Temps replaces six paid SaaS tools with a single Rust binary: deployments, web analytics, session replay, error tracking, uptime monitoring, and managed databases. A mid-stage team pays $300-600/month for equivalent SaaS tooling according to MassiveGrid (2026). Temps on a Hetzner CX22 costs about $6/month.
[ORIGINAL DATA] We've tested Temps deployments on Hetzner CX22 instances (2 vCPU, 4GB RAM) handling 50+ Next.js projects simultaneously, with built-in analytics processing 500K+ events per day without degradation.
Every other alternative on this list handles deployment. None of them bundle the observability stack you'll inevitably need. You'll still reach for Sentry ($26/mo), Plausible ($9/mo), FullStory ($99/mo), and a monitoring tool ($15/mo) -- adding $150-300/month on top of your hosting bill. Temps includes all of that.
The technical foundation matters too. Temps uses Pingora as its reverse proxy -- the same technology Cloudflare built to replace Nginx, handling over 1 trillion requests per day across their network (Cloudflare, 2024). That's real production infrastructure, not a hobby project wrapper around Nginx.
| Feature | Temps | Vercel Pro |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly cost (5 people) | ~$6 | $100+ |
| Bandwidth limits | Unlimited (your VPS) | 1TB then $0.15/GB |
| Analytics | Built-in | $10/mo add-on |
| Error tracking | Built-in | Not included |
| Session replay | Built-in | Not included |
| Uptime monitoring | Built-in | Not included |
| Preview environments | Yes | Yes |
| Git-push deploys | Yes | Yes |
Teams that want to consolidate deployment and observability into one tool. Especially effective for indie hackers and startups who can't justify $200-600/mo in monitoring subscriptions.
Citation capsule: Temps bundles deployment, web analytics, session replay, error tracking, uptime monitoring, and managed databases into a single Rust binary that runs on a ~$6/month VPS. Equivalent SaaS tooling costs $300-600/month for a mid-stage team (MassiveGrid, 2026).
Related: How Temps saves 80-95% vs Vercel
Coolify has the largest community of any self-hosted PaaS with over 52,400 GitHub stars and 280+ one-click service templates. Docker adoption hit 71.1% in the 2025 Stack Overflow Developer Survey -- a 17-point jump in a single year -- and Coolify rides that wave with a polished Docker-based UI.
One-click installs for PostgreSQL, Redis, MinIO, Plausible, and hundreds more services. Coolify wraps Docker Compose in a clean web dashboard with SSL, backups, and multi-server support over SSH. Their managed cloud offering starts at $5/month.
But here's the trade-off: Coolify doesn't include analytics, error tracking, or session replay. You'll need to add those yourself -- which means deploying and maintaining separate Plausible, Sentry, and session recording instances. That adds operational complexity and $50-170/month in additional SaaS costs.
Developers who want a wide app marketplace and don't mind assembling monitoring from separate tools.
[INTERNAL-LINK: detailed Coolify review → /blog/coolify-review-2026]
Railway uses consumption-based pricing with no per-seat charges -- you pay for actual CPU, memory, and network usage. Their Pro plan starts at $5/month per user with $10 included usage according to Railway's pricing page. For small teams with light workloads, that's cheaper than Vercel.
Railway supports Next.js with full SSR through Nixpacks-based builds. Push your code, Railway detects Next.js, and deploys a containerized build. You get custom domains, automatic SSL, and integrated PostgreSQL or Redis databases. The DX is close to Vercel's -- minus the edge runtime.
Where Railway gets expensive is scale. CPU is billed at $0.000463/vCPU/minute and memory at $0.000231/GB/minute. A Next.js app using 1 vCPU and 1GB RAM 24/7 costs roughly $30/month in compute alone. Add a database and the bill climbs to $40-60/month.
Small teams deploying full-stack apps with databases who want managed simplicity without per-seat pricing.
Render offers a free tier with 750 hours of web service runtime, 100GB bandwidth, and managed PostgreSQL for 90 days. Their paid plans start at $7/month per web service according to Render's pricing page. After Heroku eliminated its free tier in November 2022, Render absorbed a significant chunk of that migration traffic.
Render supports Next.js through Docker or native Node.js builds. You get automatic SSL, custom domains, and a straightforward dashboard. The platform handles ISR (Incremental Static Regeneration) and SSR without custom configuration.
The catch? Render's free tier spins down after 15 minutes of inactivity. Cold starts can take 30-60 seconds. For production apps, you need the paid tier -- and at $7/month per service, a Next.js frontend plus an API backend plus a database hits $21-35/month before you've added team features.
Solo developers and side projects that need a free starting point with an easy upgrade path.
Netlify's free tier includes 100GB bandwidth, 300 build minutes, and 125,000 serverless function invocations per month according to Netlify's pricing page. Pro costs $19/seat/month. Netlify was built for static-first architectures, and it shows -- their CDN and edge functions are excellent for JAMstack sites, but full Next.js SSR support requires their adapter and comes with limitations.
Netlify's Next.js support has improved significantly, but it's not first-party. You need @netlify/plugin-nextjs to translate Next.js features into Netlify's runtime. Most features work -- SSR, ISR, API routes, image optimization -- but edge cases around middleware and advanced routing can cause issues. If you're building a heavily dynamic Next.js app, you might hit friction.
Teams building static-first or JAMstack sites who don't need full SSR capabilities.
Related: Netlify hidden costs and alternatives
Cloudflare Pages offers unlimited bandwidth on all plans -- including the free tier -- with 500 builds per month and support for up to 5 concurrent builds according to Cloudflare's pricing page. The Workers Paid plan at $5/month unlocks the full edge runtime. Cloudflare runs in 330+ cities across 120+ countries, making it the largest edge network available to individual developers.
Full Next.js support on Cloudflare requires OpenNext -- a community adapter that translates Next.js features to Cloudflare Workers. It works for many use cases, but isn't officially supported by Vercel. Expect occasional compatibility gaps with the latest Next.js features.
That said, for static and hybrid Next.js apps, Cloudflare Pages is hard to beat on price. Unlimited bandwidth alone saves hundreds compared to Vercel's $0.15/GB overages.
Static-heavy Next.js apps that prioritize global performance and want unlimited bandwidth without usage fees.
Fly.io runs Docker containers on hardware in 30+ regions worldwide and offers a free tier with 3 shared-CPU VMs and 160GB outbound transfer per month. Paid plans start with a $5/month minimum spend, and you pay per-second for compute according to Fly.io's pricing page.
Fly.io runs Next.js as a Docker container. You get full SSR support, multi-region deployment, and the ability to place your app close to your users. The fly launch CLI auto-detects Next.js and generates a Dockerfile.
The learning curve is steeper than Vercel or Railway. You're managing containers, scaling policies, and machine sizes. But the control is real -- you can run your Next.js app in Sao Paulo, Tokyo, and Amsterdam simultaneously without paying $45,000/year for Enterprise geo-routing.
Teams that need multi-region deployments without enterprise pricing, and are comfortable with container-based workflows.
DigitalOcean App Platform starts at $5/month for a basic web service with 1GB RAM and 1 vCPU according to DigitalOcean's pricing page. There's a free static site tier too. No per-seat pricing. DigitalOcean reported $19.4 million in annual recurring revenue growth in their 2025 earnings, showing consistent developer demand for simpler cloud alternatives.
App Platform detects Next.js automatically and deploys via buildpacks. SSR works, custom domains are included, and managed databases are one click away. It's straightforward -- less flexible than Fly.io, but much simpler to set up.
The limitations show at scale. No edge runtime, no preview environments on the basic tier, and the platform doesn't support monorepo configurations well. For a single Next.js app with moderate traffic, it's solid. For complex setups, you'll outgrow it.
Small teams who want managed hosting without the complexity of AWS or the cost of Vercel's per-seat model.
AWS Amplify offers pay-per-use pricing: $0.01/build minute, $0.023/GB served, and $0.0000556/request for SSR according to AWS Amplify's pricing page. There are no seat fees -- access is managed through AWS IAM. For teams already running on AWS, Amplify integrates natively with other AWS services.
Amplify supports Next.js 14+ with SSR, ISR, middleware, and image optimization. Deployments trigger from Git pushes, and preview environments work out of the box. AWS invested heavily in Next.js support after recognizing how many developers were choosing Vercel purely for Next.js deployment convenience.
The downside? AWS pricing complexity. Calculating your monthly Amplify bill requires understanding build minutes, data transfer, request counts, and storage. And if your Next.js app calls Lambda functions, DynamoDB, or S3, each service bills separately. The total is often lower than Vercel -- but much harder to predict.
Teams with existing AWS infrastructure who want to keep everything under one cloud provider.
A Hetzner CX22 VPS (2 vCPU, 4GB RAM) costs EUR 3.79/month according to Hetzner's pricing page. Pair that with Docker, a reverse proxy like Caddy or Traefik, and a CI/CD script, and you've got a fully self-managed Next.js deployment for under $5/month. No seat limits. No bandwidth charges. No vendor lock-in.
[PERSONAL EXPERIENCE] We've seen developers run 10+ Next.js projects on a single CX22 instance with Caddy as the reverse proxy. The setup takes 1-2 hours initially, but maintenance becomes the hidden cost -- SSL renewals, security patches, Docker updates, and log management all fall on you.
You'll need Docker, a reverse proxy (Caddy for automatic HTTPS is the easiest), a CI/CD pipeline (GitHub Actions works), and patience. There's no dashboard, no one-click deploys, no preview environments -- unless you build them yourself.
The trade-off is total. You get complete control and the lowest possible cost. You lose every convenience that platforms provide. For experienced developers who enjoy infrastructure work, that's fine. For teams that want to ship features, the operational overhead can slow you down.
Experienced developers who enjoy infrastructure work and want the absolute lowest cost with maximum control.
Related: How to deploy Next.js to a VPS manually
Total cost of ownership matters more than sticker price. Vercel Pro at $20/seat/month sounds reasonable until you factor in bandwidth overages, serverless compute, and the external tools you'll need for monitoring. The self-hosted cloud platform market hit $19.7 billion in 2025 and is growing at 14.6% annually (The Business Research Company, 2026) -- because developers are doing this math.
Here's what a 5-person team actually pays per month:
| Platform | Base Cost | + Monitoring Stack | Total/Month |
|---|---|---|---|
| Vercel Pro | $100 (5 seats) | $50-150 (Sentry, analytics) | $150-250 |
| Temps | ~$6 (VPS) | $0 (built-in) | ~$6 |
| Coolify | ~$5 (VPS) | $50-170 (separate tools) | $55-175 |
| Railway | $25-60 (usage) | $50-150 | $75-210 |
| Render | $21-35 (services) | $50-150 | $71-185 |
| Netlify Pro | $95 (5 seats) | $9+ (analytics add-on) | $104+ |
| Cloudflare Pages | $5 (Workers paid) | $50-150 | $55-155 |
| Fly.io | $15-40 (usage) | $50-150 | $65-190 |
| DO App Platform | $15-30 (services) | $50-150 | $65-180 |
| AWS Amplify | $10-50 (usage) | $50-150 | $60-200 |
| Docker + VPS | ~$4 (VPS) | $50-170 (if you want them) | $54-174 |
[UNIQUE INSIGHT] The "monitoring tax" is the hidden equalizer. Every platform except Temps requires external analytics, error tracking, and uptime monitoring. Those tools typically cost $50-170/month for a small team -- often exceeding the hosting cost itself. When you include the full stack, self-hosted platforms without built-in observability aren't actually cheaper than managed alternatives.
Citation capsule: A 5-person team on Vercel Pro pays $100/month in seat fees before any usage charges, per Vercel's pricing page. Adding external monitoring tools (Sentry, Plausible, uptime) brings the total to $150-250/month. Self-hosted alternatives with built-in observability reduce that to as low as ~$6/month.
[CHART: Bar chart -- monthly total cost of ownership by platform for 5-person team -- sources: official pricing pages March 2026]
Not all Vercel alternatives support every Next.js feature equally. Since Vercel builds Next.js, they'll always have first-party support for new features. According to the Next.js 15 release blog (Vercel, 2024), features like Partial Prerendering, Server Actions, and the App Router were designed with Vercel's infrastructure in mind.
Here's a compatibility breakdown:
| Feature | Vercel | Temps | Railway | Render | Netlify | Cloudflare | Fly.io |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SSR | Full | Full | Full | Full | Adapter | OpenNext | Full |
| ISR | Full | Full | Full | Full | Adapter | Partial | Full |
| App Router | Full | Full | Full | Full | Full | Partial | Full |
| Middleware | Full (Edge) | Full (Pingora) | Full (Node) | Full (Node) | Partial | Workers | Full (Node) |
| Image Optimization | Built-in | Built-in | Manual | Manual | Plugin | Manual | Manual |
| Preview Environments | Auto | Auto | Auto | Manual | Auto | Auto | Manual |
Docker-based platforms (Temps, Railway, Fly.io, DIY) run Next.js in standalone Node.js mode, which supports the full feature set. Adapter-based platforms (Netlify, Cloudflare) translate Next.js to their runtimes, which can lag behind on newer features.
Does that matter for your app? If you're using basic SSR and API routes, every platform on this list works fine. If you're pushing the edges of Next.js -- Partial Prerendering, advanced middleware, streaming SSR -- test your specific features before committing.
[INTERNAL-LINK: 5 ways to deploy Next.js → /blog/5-ways-to-deploy-nextjs-app]
The right choice depends on your team's priorities. Here's a decision framework based on what we've seen work:
You want deployment and observability in one tool. You don't want to manage separate Sentry, Plausible, and FullStory subscriptions. You're comfortable with self-hosting (or using Temps Cloud at ~$6/mo). You want the lowest total cost of ownership.
You want the widest app marketplace and community support. You're already comfortable with Docker. You don't mind assembling your monitoring stack from separate tools.
You want managed hosting with no per-seat fees. Your app needs databases alongside the frontend. You prefer paying for what you use over flat monthly rates.
Your app is primarily static or uses light server-side logic. Unlimited bandwidth matters. You want the fastest global CDN without paying for it.
You want maximum control and minimum cost. You enjoy infrastructure work. You have the time and expertise to maintain everything yourself.
Related: 5 ways to deploy a Next.js app
Docker on a Hetzner VPS at EUR 3.79/month (~$4) is the absolute cheapest, but you manage everything yourself. Temps at ~$6/month on Hetzner gives you a managed experience with built-in observability. Cloudflare Pages is the cheapest managed option with unlimited bandwidth on the free tier, though full Next.js SSR requires the OpenNext adapter per Cloudflare's docs.
Yes. Any platform that runs Docker or Node.js supports Next.js SSR through standalone output mode. Set output: "standalone" in next.config.js, and your app runs as a self-contained Node.js server. Every alternative on this list supports this approach. The only features that require Vercel-specific infrastructure are Edge Middleware and Vercel-native analytics.
Cloudflare Pages offers unlimited bandwidth and a larger edge network (330+ cities vs Netlify's CDN), making it better for traffic-heavy static sites. Netlify's Next.js adapter is more mature and supports more SSR features out of the box. For purely static Next.js sites, Cloudflare wins on cost. For apps with significant server-side rendering, Netlify's adapter handles more edge cases. Neither matches the full compatibility of Docker-based deployments.
The migration involves three steps: set output: "standalone" in your Next.js config, replace any Vercel-specific APIs (like @vercel/analytics or @vercel/og), and configure your new platform's deploy pipeline. Most migrations take 15 minutes to 2 hours depending on how tightly your code is coupled to Vercel's APIs. Our complete migration guide covers both managed and DIY paths with working code.
Temps, Coolify, and most managed platforms (Railway, Netlify, Cloudflare Pages) support automatic preview environments for pull requests. Docker + VPS requires building this yourself. Preview environments are one of Vercel's best features, but they're no longer exclusive -- the self-hosting market's 14.6% annual growth (The Business Research Company, 2026) has pushed self-hosted platforms to match managed-platform DX features.
[INTERNAL-LINK: how preview environments work → /blog/how-to-set-up-preview-environments-every-pull-request]
Vercel is still excellent software. The DX is unmatched for zero-config Next.js deployment. But at $20/seat/month with usage-based overages, it's not the only option -- and for many teams, it's not the most cost-effective one.
If you want managed simplicity without per-seat pricing, Railway and Render are strong choices. If you want the fastest CDN with unlimited bandwidth, Cloudflare Pages is hard to beat for static-heavy sites. If you want maximum control, Docker on a VPS gives you everything for under $5/month.
But if you want deployment and observability in a single tool -- analytics, error tracking, session replay, and uptime monitoring without bolting on $150-300/month in SaaS subscriptions -- that's where self-hosted platforms with built-in observability stand apart. The self-hosting market's projected growth to $85.2 billion by 2034 (Market.us, 2025) reflects a real shift in how teams think about infrastructure ownership.
The best Vercel alternative is the one that matches your team's priorities. Cost, control, convenience -- pick two.
Related: Introducing Temps: a self-hosted Vercel alternative
[INTERNAL-LINK: get started with Temps → /blog/deploy-nextjs-with-temps]
