Netlify vs Vercel: free plans, pricing and which to pick (2026)

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The quick verdict

Pick Netlify if you run a small business site, a client site or a team project and want one flat price. Its Free plan has no personal-only rule on the pricing page, form submissions are free, and Pro starts at $20 a month with unlimited team members.

Pick Vercel if you build with Next.js or v0, or need a big monthly data allowance. Its free Hobby plan is more generous, with 100 GB of transfer, but it is for personal, non-commercial use only. Pro is $20 a month per deploying seat and includes 1 TB of data transfer.

Both host static sites and modern JavaScript apps from a Git repository, with free HTTPS and a global CDN. The choice comes down to how each one counts usage and who is allowed on the free plan.

Side by side

Neither has a store or a page editor of its own, so ecommerce fees and builder-style features don’t apply. Sources: Netlify pricing, Netlify credit docs, Vercel pricing and Vercel Pro docs.

How each one counts usage

Netlify: one pool of credits

Netlify moved new accounts to credit plans on September 4, 2025. Everything draws from one monthly pool: a production deploy is 15 credits, a GB of bandwidth is 20, a GB-hour of function compute is 10, and 10,000 web requests are 2.

Spent on one thing only, Free’s 300 credits buy at most 15 GB of bandwidth or 20 deploys. Personal’s 1,000 credits buy up to 50 GB, and Pro’s 3,000 up to 150 GB. Bigger Pro tiers cost $33 (5,000 credits), $63 (10,000), $95 (15,000) and $126 (20,000) a month, and those tiers roll unused credits over for one extra month.

Vercel: included amounts, then a dollar credit

Hobby includes set amounts each month: 100 GB of Fast Data Transfer, 1 million CDN requests, 1 million function invocations and 4 hours of active CPU. You can’t buy more on Hobby.

Pro gives you $20 of usage credit each month, which expires if unused, plus the lowest Flat Rate CDN tier: 1 million CDN requests and 1 TB of transfer. Bigger tiers are $20, $100 and $300 a month. Outside the flat rate, Vercel’s regional pricing lists data transfer at $0.15 to $0.35 per GB.

Cost over 3 years

Here is the same small business site on both: a brochure site with a contact form, a .com domain ($48.24 over three years) and one Google Workspace inbox ($252). Neither host sells email, and Vercel’s free first-year domain covers 16 extensions such as .co and .dev, not .com.

The math: $9 x 36 = $324; $20 x 36 = $720; 3 seats x $20 x 36 = $2,160; add $48.24 and $252 for the last column. Vercel Hobby is left out because a business site counts as commercial use.

Will the site fit Netlify Free? Take our own example of 10 GB of transfer and 8 deploys a month: 10 x 20 + 8 x 15 = 320 credits. That’s over 300, so the site would pause, and Personal at $9 a month is the safer choice. For a three-person team, Netlify Pro stays at $720 while Vercel Pro triples.

Building and ease of use

Both work the same way at the start: connect the Git repository that holds your site, choose its build settings and deploy. Each new push publishes a new version.

Vercel’s docs describe preview deployments that teammates, including free viewer seats, can open and comment on. Netlify’s pricing lists Preview Servers, with one included on Personal and Pro and $15 for each extra one.

Vercel comes from the company behind Next.js, and its v0 builder writes Next.js code, so Next.js projects are its home ground. Netlify adds built-in extras that help simple sites, such as form handling with free submissions.

Neither is a website builder. If you want to drag and drop sections or edit text in a browser, you’ll need a builder or a headless CMS connected to the site.

Domains, HTTPS and plan limits

Both give every site free HTTPS. Netlify’s docs say it provisions a Let’s Encrypt SSL certificate automatically when you add a custom domain and renews it for you, and that Netlify-managed certificates are free for all sites. Custom domains with SSL are part of the Free plan. Vercel’s SSL docs say it requests a Let’s Encrypt certificate for every domain you add to a project and renews it automatically.

Vercel’s Hobby plan allows 200 projects, 100 deployments a day and 50 domains per project. Pro removes the project and domain caps and allows 6,000 deployments a day. Paid Pro teams can claim one free first-year domain on an eligible extension, which then renews at the standard rate.

Small extras can change the bill. Vercel charges $20 a month per project for password protection on Pro. Netlify charges $40 for each extra concurrent build and $15 for each extra Preview Server. Netlify takes credit cards only unless you’re on Enterprise, and Vercel’s prices exclude sales tax and VAT.

Gotchas

• Netlify pauses everything. If one project goes over its limit, all projects on the account pause until the next cycle. Turn on auto recharge (off by default, and only Team Owners can enable it) if a business site must stay up.
• Netlify legacy plans. Accounts created before September 4, 2025 may be on older plans. Netlify says switching to a credit plan can’t be undone.
• Vercel’s credit doesn’t roll over. The $20 Pro credit expires at the end of each month.
• Set a Vercel spend limit. By default, Vercel sends a spend notification at $200 per billing cycle. Set a lower alert in spend management if your budget is small.

AI features and AI builders

Vercel owns v0, an AI builder that writes Next.js code and deploys to Vercel in one click. v0’s own plans pay for the AI; hosting is billed separately under your Vercel plan. A business site made with v0 needs Vercel Pro.

Netlify bills AI inference for its Agent Runners and AI Gateway in credits, at 180 credits per $1 of model usage. Bolt offers Netlify deployment as an alternative to its own hosting, and Lovable lists both Netlify and Vercel as places to deploy the front end when you leave. See our Lovable vs v0 comparison for the builders themselves.

Leaving later

We don’t give hosts an exit score, but both rank well on the things our exit scores measure. Your code stays in your own Git repository, your domain can point anywhere through DNS, and a static site runs on any host.

What needs work: Netlify Forms and Netlify-specific redirect and function files, or Vercel functions and image optimization. A plain static site moves quickly; a Next.js app with server features takes a developer. If you downgrade from Vercel Pro to Hobby, the Pro plan docs say you must first move any connected domains and storage by hand.

Pick Netlify if…

• The site is for a business and you want to start free or at $9 a month.
• Several people deploy and you want one $20 team price.
• You want a contact form without another service.

Pick Vercel if…

• You build with Next.js or v0.
• Traffic is high: 1 TB of transfer is included on Pro.
• It’s a personal, non-commercial project that fits Hobby’s 100 GB.

Neither? Look at…

Cloudflare Pages lists unlimited bandwidth on its free plan and GitHub Pages is free for public repositories but not for running an online business or store. Our static site hosting guide compares all four. If you’d rather not touch code, a builder or WordPress on a regular web host is the easier road.