COMPARE:
Netlify or Vercel for hosting a front end
Netlify against Vercel for hosting and deploying a front end application, with the same seven questions asked of each and neither one flattered. Mamba Labs builds Apify actors, and neither of these is one of them, so there is no third column on this page.
If you only read one part
If the app is Next.js, Vercel is the reference platform and everything lands there first. If it is anything else, Netlify does the same job with fewer moving parts and a plainer bill.
The same questions, both tools
| Netlify | Vercel | |
|---|---|---|
| What it actually does | Builds a site from a git push and serves it from a CDN, with functions and redirects alongside. | Builds and serves a front end application, with rendering, caching and functions at the edge. |
| Coverage and hit rate | Any framework, plus forms, identity, blob storage, scheduled functions and split testing. | Every framework, and Next.js features land here first because both come from the same place. |
| What it costs | Per member per month plus bandwidth, build minutes and function invocations. | Per seat per month plus usage, with the usage lines counted more finely than most. |
| How it fits a workflow | Git connected by default, with deploy previews per pull request and a CLI for everything else. | Git connected, preview deployments per branch, and observability that shows the rendering path. |
| Where the data comes from | Your repository. Nothing else is required to be in the platform. | Your repository. |
| What it takes to set up | Connect the repo and it deploys. There is very little to configure. | Connect the repo. A Next.js project needs no configuration at all. |
| Where it stops | Framework specific features arrive later here than on the platform whose framework it is. | The pricing surface is wide enough that a busy month is hard to predict in advance. |
The same seven questions are asked on every compare page here, in this order, so two of these pages can be read against each other.
Who wins what
- Netlify wins on what it actually does, what it takes to set up. Front end hosting with build, functions, forms and redirects in one project.
- Vercel wins on coverage and hit rate, how it fits a workflow. Front end hosting built by the team that makes Next.js.
- Nobody wins on what it costs, where the data comes from, where it stops. Netlify and Vercel give the same answer on those, and we are not going to invent a difference.
Try them yourself
The honest answer
Framework decides this more than anything either company says. Next.js on Vercel removes a category of problems that Next.js elsewhere creates, and the observability is genuinely better. For a static site or an SSR framework that is not Next.js, Netlify is simpler. Its forms, redirects and blob storage cover things you would otherwise add a service for. Both meter enough separate lines that a busy month surprises people. Read the usage page before the pricing page.