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Cloudflare vs Vercel

Two sides of the hosting decision: edge platform and frontend cloud. When each fits, what it costs, who moves from one to the other, and what makers who chose it say.

CloudflareEdge platformllms.txtMCP
VercelFrontend cloudllms.txtMCPCLIIn v0
Ask your AI about this, with this page as the source:ChatGPT ↗Claude ↗Perplexity ↗

Which fits you

Choose Cloudflare if
  • Your app is a static site or docs and should cost nothing to host

Use it whenYou want the cheapest global hosting and can live with the Workers runtime.

Trade-offThe Workers runtime isn't full Node.js; some libraries need adapting.

Choose Vercel if
  • You built a Next.js or other frontend-heavy app and want preview URLs on every pull request

Use it whenYour app is Next.js, or you want a preview URL on every pull request with no setup.

Trade-offThe Hobby plan is non-commercial; costs grow with usage.

At a glance

CloudflareVercel
Used by374 makers' products · 190 open-source projectsNo maker's product yet
Cost at default usagerequests 5 million requests, data transfer out 100 GB, serverless function compute 100 GB-hours$12/mo Workers Paid$40/mo Pro + Flat Rate CDN 10M
Moved to it on GitHubpull requests since Oct 2024242 from Vercel83 from Cloudflare
Downloads18.6M/wk3.1× vs npm5.7M/wk+93% vs npm
PricingGenerous free tier; usage-based paid plans. · paid from $5/mo (Workers Paid)Free Hobby plan (non-commercial); Pro per seat plus usage. · paid from $20/mo
Free tierYesYes
Open sourceNoNo
Incidents, 90 daysfrom its status page50+31 (10 major)

Cost as you grow

Both cost $0 up to 100k requests; from 500k requests Vercel costs less ($0 vs $5.12); from about 5M requests Cloudflare does ($12 vs $40). They're different kinds of tool — edge platform and frontend cloud — so the prices don't buy the same thing.

$0$100$500$1,000$2,0000.10.5151050100500
VercelCloudflarex: requests per month (million requests), other usage scaled with it; held at 1 seat (developers on the team) · cheapest usable plan at each point, list prices · try your own numbers
The numbers, plan by plan
Requests per monthCloudflareVercel
0.1$0 Workers Free$0 Hobby
0.5$5.12 Workers Paid$0 Hobby
1$5.84 Workers Paid$0 Hobby
5$12 Workers Paid$40 Pro + Flat Rate CDN 10M
10$19 Workers Paid$40 Pro + Flat Rate CDN 10M
50$88 Workers Paid$127 Pro + Flat Rate CDN 50M
100$175 Workers Paid$353 Pro + Flat Rate CDN 150M
500$871 Workers Paid$2,766 Pro (on-demand CDN)

From each vendor's pricing page: Cloudflare, Vercel.

Who moves from one to the other

Public pull requests on GitHub since Oct 2024 whose title says "Cloudflare to Vercel" or the reverse — real code changes, by developers in general rather than makers only.

Vercel → Cloudflare242 PRs
All matching pull requests on GitHub ↗
Cloudflare → Vercel83 PRs
All matching pull requests on GitHub ↗

What makers say

Makers on using it for hosting, from Product Hunt and Starter Story interviews, each linked to the source. Products with a page of their own and fuller notes first.

On Cloudflare
Cloudflare handles everything for iVox — DNS, website hosting on Pages, R2 file storage for downloads, and Workers for the license backend. All of it, basically free at indie scale.
iVox, the makerJun 2026 ↗
Cloudflare Workers and Pages let us deploy instantly at the network edge, delivering lightning-fast performance and reliability without the usual complexities of traditional hosting.
Comigo, the makerSep 2026 ↗
Snapset’s website, licensing backend, and email routing all run on Cloudflare. Pages, Workers, and D1 let me keep the infrastructure simple and manage almost everything in one place.
Snapset, the makerSep 2026 ↗
230 more on the Cloudflare page →
On Vercel

No maker quote about Vercel for hosting yet.

Loved and watch-outs

Themes that recur in makers' words and Hacker News comments, each linked to what it summarises.

Cloudflare
Most loved
  • Workers, D1, R2, Durable Objects and more combine as bindings on one platform instead of separate vendors. PHPH 2PH 3PH 4
  • The free tier bundles DNS, CDN, TLS and abuse protection in one dashboard. PHPH 2
  • Wrangler deploys to the global edge in seconds, with preview links per pull request. PHPH 2PH 3
Watch-outs
  • Bot checks and default AI-crawler blocking get in the way of legitimate users and automation. HNHN 2HN 3HN 4
  • The dashboard is slow and buggy, with login and passkey problems. HNHN 2
  • It has cut off customers abruptly, and billing support was slow and unhelpful when production went down. HNHN 2HN 3
On Product Hunt: 5.0★, 241 reviews · mentioned most: fast performance, reliable security, global CDN
Vercel
Most loved
  • Pushing to Git deploys automatically with zero configuration. PHPH 2PH 3PH 4
  • Every commit or pull request gets a preview URL, so changes are reviewed live before release. PHPH 2PH 3PH 4
  • Small teams ship without managing infrastructure or CI/CD themselves. PHPH 2PH 3PH 4
Watch-outs
  • Heavy bot traffic, such as Meta's crawler, can multiply the bill with little protection. HNHN 2HN 3
  • Execution limits and middleware quirks need workarounds. PH
On Product Hunt: 5.0★, 1,077 reviews · mentioned most: fast deployment, Next.js integration, developer experience · complaints: pricing, UI dependencies

Who uses each

Cloudflare374 makers' products
2dto3DAgent 37 Cloudagent-managerAgentCenter for OpenClawAgentXAgnost AIAI Santa ClausAINaveAntiquotedApple Dev Docs Translation & EnhancerAppllamaAskReferral+362 more
Vercel0 makers' products
None tracked yet.

What makers pair each with

With Cloudflare
Payments
Frontend Framework
Transactional Email
LLM API
With Vercel
Frontend Framework
Transactional Email
Database
Payments

Neither quite right?

See the whole hosting decision →
NetlifyFrontend cloudStatic sites and JAMstack apps on any framework.vs Cloudflare →vs Vercel →
RailwayPaaSServers, workers and databases deployed together, with almost no configuration.vs Cloudflare →vs Vercel →
RenderPaaSA Heroku-style platform for web services, cron jobs and Postgres.vs Vercel →
Fly.ioContainer platformDocker apps that should run close to users in many regions.vs Vercel →
Amazon Web ServicesHyperscaler cloudThe widest catalog of building blocks — Lambda, containers, managed databases, queues — to assemble your own infrastructure.vs Cloudflare →vs Vercel →
Hetzner CloudYour own serverA lot of CPU and RAM per euro, in European, US and Singapore regions.
CoolifyYour own serverA Heroku- or Vercel-style dashboard on your own server, with many one-click services.