10 Vercel Alternatives for Deploying Apps in 2026

If you’ve been using Vercel and love the slick Git-based workflows, instant preview deploys, and global content delivery, but want to explore other options, you’re in good company. While Vercel is a favorite among front-end and Jamstack developers, a growing landscape of platforms offers similar features for deploying and scaling web apps. Depending on whether you’re looking for serverless simplicity, container control, or something in between, there are numerous alternatives to consider, including DigitalOcean App Platform, Netlify, Cloudflare Pages, and AWS Amplify.

Netlify and Cloudflare Pages focus on serverless deployments, making it easy to launch static and edge-based apps. Others, like Heroku, Coolify, and Render, take a container-based approach, offering more flexibility for full-stack or backend-heavy applications. Then there are hybrid platforms, such as DigitalOcean’s App Platform and AWS Amplify, that blend the best of both worlds—giving you the option to run serverless functions or containerized services side by side. Whatever your stack or scaling needs, there’s likely a Vercel alternative that fits your workflow.

What is Vercel?

Vercel Inc. is a cloud application company based in the United States that created and maintains the Next.js web development framework. Its platform-as-a-service (PaaS) offering provides developer tools, frameworks, and cloud infrastructure to build and maintain websites.

It is also the maker of the AI SDK and the v0 AI model. The AI SDK is an open-source library for building out AI-powered applications and agents with TypeScript. With v0, use natural language prompts to generate production-ready, full-stack applications and then connect databases, AI models, external APIs, and GitHub to support data-based applications. It’s available to create landing pages, dashboards, e-commerce sites, data visualization tools, and mobile-responsive applications.

Vercel as PaaS

With PaaS, developers can build, scale, and deploy applications without needing to manage the backend infrastructure, such as networking, middleware, servers, storage, virtualization, the OS, and the runtime environments. The only thing you need to oversee is the code. Vercel’s PaaS offers pre-configured runtime environments and predictable scaling, storage, and security options, eliminating the need for manual configurations of these technical components.

Vercel key features:

• Content delivery network to optimize web application performance and distribute content on a global scale.

• Edge middleware to process requests at the network edge, reducing overall latency and adding flexibility for traffic routing and content delivery.

• Continuous deployment workflows that automate web application updates, code commits, and reduce the amount of required manual updates.

• Serverless functions make it easy to build APIs and deploy code without the need for extra server management and hardware overhead.

Vercel pricing:

• Free - $0. Repository importing, automatic CI/CD, web app firewall, global automated CDN, DDoS mitigation, plus traffic and performance insights.

• Hobby - $20/month ($240/year). Hobby features plus $20 of usage credit, advanced spend management, cold start prevention, faster build, and no queue time, plus team collaboration features.

• Enterprise - Custom pricing. Pro features plus guest and team access controls, SCIM and directory sync, managed WAF rulesets, multi-region compute and failover, advanced support, and 99.99% SLA.

Benefits of Vercel alternatives

Vercel isn’t the only option on the market for PaaS and application deployment platforms. If you’re curious about why it makes sense to use a Vercel alternative, consider these factors:

• Increased backend flexibility: Vercel provides serverless functions, but you and your team may need containerless or hybrid configurations.

• Pricing: Non-Vercel options (such as Cloudflare) offer generous free tiers, and others use pay-as-you-go pricing that makes billing more affordable or predictable.

• Language and runtime support: Vercel is optimized for Next.js and JavaScript. Alternatives can support Python, Ruby, Go, and custom Docker containers.

• Greater environment control: Tools like Coolify and Dokploy enable self-hosting your own PaaS, providing full control over infrastructure, deployment, and costs. This can be ideal for smaller teams, hyper-specific applications, or cost-conscious organizations.

• Reduced lock-in: Working with open-source technologies or those not tied to a specific vendor (such as Docker, Prometheus monitoring, and standard build pipelines) means there is less reliance on product roadmaps or proprietary technology.

How to choose a Vercel alternative

Consider the following criteria to select the ideal Vercel alternative for your application development and deployment workloads:

• Infrastructure configuration requirements: Do you require serverless, container, or hybrid configurations?

• Scalability: Do you need to scale as web application traffic grows or shrinks? Any offering you select should be able to scale without performance issues, incorporating a CDN to support your static assets. Take note of any plan-specific bandwidth limitations.

• CI/CD workflow: How does the platform perform and support your CI/CD workflow? Most Vercel alternatives offer GitHub/Git integration and automation features for automatic and scheduled deployments, with varying levels of preview and testing environments.

• Type of app deployment and hosting: Determine whether you require static or dynamic application hosting, support for mobile development, or specific application features (such as payment processing, online store functionality, or database hosting).

• Cost: Investigate how pricing is determined and how your workload or hosting requirements might impact your monthly invoice. Also consider if there’s a free trial that makes it possible to try before you buy.

Top Vercel alternatives

If you’re looking for an alternative to Vercel for application deployment and hosting, consider these top options:

Hybrid infrastructure offerings

If you have application deployment requirements across virtual machines, containers, cloud, and on-premises hardware, it’s best to evaluate options for a hybrid infrastructure that can both provide all necessary configurations and scale computing power as needed for your applications.

DigitalOcean App Platform for cost-efficient hybrid PaaS deployments

DigitalOcean App Platform is a cost-effective option for PaaS if you run on a hybrid infrastructure setup that requires either cloud-hosted builds, serverless functions, containers, or dedicated CPU power. Use it to quickly set up staging, production, and preview environments throughout the development process and run apps by connecting GitHub, GitLab, Git repositories, or pre-built containers from Docker or GitHub. App Platform also offers autoscaling, plush archiving and restoration features, to adjust the amount of computing power needed as your workloads fluctuate. Use Node.js, Python, PHP, Ruby, Go, Static Sites (Gatsby, Hugo, Jekyll, React), Java, and .NET for your application development.

DigitalOcean App Platform key features:

• Support for both static assets through the DigitalOcean CDN and dynamic applications.

• Continuous deployment workflow setup for automated code updates with a connection to Git repositories and Git Large File Support.

• Dedicated egress IP addresses (for increased reliability and stability) and static ingress IP addresses (for integrating network controls).

• High availability for apps running two or more containers and autoscaling for dedicated CPU plans.

DigitalOcean App Platform pricing:

• Free - $0. 3 applications with static sites, deployment from GitHub and GitLab, automatic HTTPS, custom domain, global CDN, DDoS migration, and 1GiB data transfer allowance per app with static sites.

• Paid - $5/month ($60/year). All free tier features plus deployment from container registries, shared and dedicated CPU, horizontal and vertical scaling, automatic OS patching, development and production databases, and up to 10 revisions for rollbacks.

AWS Amplify for web and mobile full-stack applications

AWS Amplify is a backend-as-a-service (which abstracts and automates backend code components) that easily deploys server-side rendered and frontend apps for both web and mobile applications. This includes SSR web applications, single-page web apps, static websites, native mobile applications, and cross-platform applications. Its hosting capabilities include feature branch deployments, pull request reviews, custom domains with SSL, plus monitoring metrics.

AWS Amplify key features:

• Git-based workflows that support zero-configuration Next.js and Nuxt deployments.

• Full-stack TypeScript capabilities that allow you to outline data models, business logic, and auth rules that use Amplify’s cloud configuration resources for deployment.

• Client-side language support for JavaScript, TypeScript, Dart, Java, Kotlin, and Swift.

• Options for authorization through OIDC, SAML, or custom reCAPTCHA, MFA, or user attribute validation.

AWS Amplify pricing:

AWS Amplify offers pay-as-you-go pricing and a pricing calculator to provide estimates.

• Free AWS Tier - $0/6 months**.** Up to $200 in credits and free use of select services.

• Paid Plan - Custom pricing**.** Up to $200 in credits, access to over 150 AWS applications, paid usage beyond credit thresholds, and workload scaling beyond thresholds.

Serverless deployment options

Serverless options enable developers to focus on code while deploying applications and APIs, eliminating the need to manage server infrastructure.

Cloudflare Pages + Workers for Jamstack applications and low-latency deployments

Cloudflare Pages provides a Jamstack platform for front-end developers to create and deploy applications. Use your Git account (and connected repositories) to generate applications with features for unlimited team seats, automatically prompted feedback, preview access control, and built-in analytics. By integrating Cloudflare Workers, you can deploy and scale applications without managing infrastructure. Workers can create full-stack applications with static assets and a CDN (front-end code), APIs, and Smart Placement (back-end code) with React, Vue, Svelte, Next, Astro, and React Router frameworks.

Cloudflare Pages + Workers key features:

• Use Cloudflare Pages for server-side code deployments with dynamic application functionality.

• Support for SLL out of the box, along with web standards such as HTTP/3, QUIC, and image compression.

• Cloudflare Workers offer built-in observability logs for application performance and monitoring.

• Workers AI for serverless large-language model and image generation integration with access to over 50 open source models.

Cloudflare Pages pricing:

• Free - $0. 500 builds per month, 100 custom domains per project, unlimited sites, static requests, and bandwidth.

• Pro - $25/month; $20/month ($240/year). 5K builds per month, 250 custom domains per project, unlimited sites, static requests, and bandwidth.

• Business - $250/month; $200/month ($2,400/year). 20K builds per month, 500 custom domains per project, unlimited sites, static requests, and unlimited bandwidth.

Netlify for AI-assisted development and serverless workloads

Netlify’s platform offering provides a host of features that streamline web application production and deployment. The Deploy Previews capability automatically reviews PRs, syncs feedback to popular code repositories, reviews development in the browser, and automates change previews. Its serverless functions write, deploy, and run your server-side code without additional server management. The platform also offers serverless storage, platform primitives for dynamic application development, and edge deployment capabilities.

Netlify key features:

• Claude Code, Codex, and Gemini AI agents are accessible from the Netlify dashboard to help with code development.

• Netify CLI that can run local development servers, local builds and plugins, and deploy your site.

• Netlify DB supports serverless Postgres storage and automatically configures your setup with connected functions and environmental variables, eliminating initial manual configuration.

• Workflows to automatically and simultaneously deploy backend and front-end code without a maintenance window via serverless Netlify Functions.

Netlify pricing:

• Free - $0. Deploy from AI, Git, or API, unlimited deploy previews, build with Agent Runners, Functions & AI models, global CDN, firewall traffic rules, basic rate limiting, and 300 credits per month to use for production deploys, compute, AI inference, bandwidth, web requests, and form submissions.

• Personal - $9/month; $9/month ($108/year). Everything in Free plus secret detection, priority email support, 7-day analytics and metrics, and 1K credits per month.

• Pro - $20/user/month; $20/month ($240/year). Everything in Personal, plus private organization repositories, shared env variables, 30-day analytics and metrics, and 3K credits per month.

• Enterprise - Custom pricing. Everything in Pro plus a 99.99% SLA, enterprise networking, high-performance builds, SSO & SCIM, organization management, log drains, and dedicated support.

Container-based infrastructure options

If you’re primarily developing with containers to create and ship work, consider PaaS and application development platforms that focus specifically on this approach.

Render for SaaS and web apps with autoscaling

Render’s PaaS uses Git-native deployments via GitHub and GitLab connections, OAuth, and webhooks to trigger automated builds when commits occur on a specified branch. It can help you build websites or full-stack web applications using a variety of programming languages (i.e Node.js, Bun, Python, Ruby, Go, Rust, and Elixir) and connections to Postgres and Key Value data stores. Render also provides vertical scaling and horizontal autoscaling based on target CPU and memory usage. Additionally, the Render API manages services, datastores, deploys, and environment groups.

Render key features:

• Custom domains with automatic TLS certificates, HTTPS redirects, and DNS configuration.

• Automatic health checks and automatic service cancellation after 15 minutes of failed tests for Git container registry deployments.

• Infrastructure-as-Code validation through Render Blueprints or Terraform.

• Global CDN offers regional hosting across the US, Europe, and Asia.

Render pricing:

All Render pricing lists are for monthly subscriptions. Computing costs are billed separately.

• Hobby - $0. Fully managed datastores, full-stack application deployment, custom domains, global CDN with regional hosting, and email support.

• Professional - $19/user/month; $19/month ($228/year). Everything in Hobby, plus 500 GB of bandwidth, collaboration with 10 team members, horizontal autoscaling, unlimited projects and environments, test with preview environments, private link connections, and chat support.

• Organization - $29/user/month; $29/month ($348/year). Everything in Professional, plus 1TB of bandwidth, unlimited team members, audit logs, SOC 2 Type II certificate, and ISO 27001 certificate.

• Enterprise - Custom pricing. Everything in Organization, plus centralized team management, guest users, SAML SSO & SCIM, guaranteed uptime, premium support, and customer success support.

Railway for full-stack apps with databases and scheduled cron jobs

Railway’s deployment platform can be used to launch services, databases, and volumes for web applications. It supports using Docker Images, GitHub repositories, or local repositories to spin up the code necessary for your applications. You can use public and private networking, TCP Proxy, and custom domains for your networking requirements with automatic encryption from Railway. Features for horizontal, vertical, and global scaling are also available to run the application in the US, Europe, and Southeast Asia.

Railway key features:

• Cron jobs to run jobs on a fixed schedule (from Atomic to 5-minute intervals), plus a template library of pre-packaged functions to help jumpstart projects.

• PostgreSQL, MySQL, MongoDB, and Redis databases for storage and built-in backups.

• Monitoring capabilities for JSON structured logs, log retention, and fully configurable dashboards to track GPU, RAM, disk, and network usage.

• Temporary PR environments and config-as-code functionalities.

Railway pricing:

• Free - $0/30 days. Up to 0.5GB of RAM, 1vCPU per service, and 0.5GB of volume storage.

• Hobby - $5/min usage. $5 of usage credits, up to 8GB RAM/8 vCPU per service, single developer workspace, community forum support, and global regions.

• Pro - $20/min usage. $20 of usage credits, up to 32GB RAM/32 vCPU per service, unlimited workspace seats, priority support, concurrent global regions, and granular access control.

• Enterprise - Custom pricing. SSO, audit logs, HIPAA BAAs, support SLOs, 90-day log history, dedicated VMs, and bring your own cloud.

Heroku Managed PaaS for web apps, AI agents, and add-ons

Heroku is an AI PaaS for application deployment, management, and scaling. It runs your applications inside smart containers on a fully managed runtime environment. With the Heroku Platform, connect to the Developer Experience—an app-centric software delivery approach to consistently create and ship applications directly from Git, GitHub, and other continuous integration systems without the need for infrastructure management. Heroku also has functions to integrate data services and third-party cloud services for data stores, logging, and monitoring.

Heroku key features:

• Heroku Platform’s Operational Experience provides troubleshooting and issue remediation support. This includes application metrics, threshold alerting, autoscaling, consolidated logs, and app webhooks.

• AI support for managed inference and agents, model context protocol (MCP), and compatibility for agentic workflows.

• Elements Marketplace for application add-ons, services, and tools such as buildpacks and MCP servers.

• Heroku Runtime provides container orchestration, log aggregation, HTTP routing, release management, configuration management, and horizontal and vertical scaling for your application.

Heroku pricing:

Custom pricing based on infrastructure configuration, RAM, and compute requirements.

Fly.io for distributed, globally-deployed container apps

Fly.io’s Fly Machines are hardware-virtualized containers that run on your own hardware across 32 deployable regions. Fly Machines offer GPU-boosted models and applications, and use distributed systems to support your applications without the need for Terraform. These offerings are automatically KVM hardware-isolated and run on bare metal, making them suitable for enterprise deployments. You can run JavaScript, TypeScript, Bun, or Deno for application containers.

Fly.io key features:

• Application boot time of 250ms or less with Fly Machines.

• Private networking available with WireGuard tunnels and IPv6, custom private networks, and Flycast (private proxy services).

• Fully managed Prometheus and Grafana monitoring setups, built-in dashboards, and PromQL querying are available, with searchable logs.

• Managed Postgres with automatic backups and recovery, plus resource scaling.

Fly.io pricing:

Custom pricing based on a pay-as-you-go pricing model. Estimate your costs with the Fly.io pricing calculator.

Open-source Vercel alternatives

These Vercel alternatives are worth considering if you prefer to build your applications on an open-source option with high levels of flexibility.

Coolify for open-source, fully self-hosted PaaS

Coolify is an open-source, self-hosting alternative to Vercel. It is compatible with a wide variety of languages and frameworks, supporting static websites, APIs, backends, databases, and services. Its self-hosting nature means you can run it on any server of your choice (including VPS and Raspberry Pi) with just an SSH connection. It also supports any Docker-compatible service, expanding the capabilities available for your applications.

Coolify key features:

• Coolify CLI integrates with popular AI code assistants, such as Claude, for help and debugging.

• Free SSL certificates that are automatically configured for custom domains.

• Automatic database backups that can run on PostgreSQL, Redis, DragonFly, KeyDB, Clickhouse, MongoDB, MySQL, MariaDB, or a Docker container within Coolify. You can use cron expressions to run backups on your desired schedule

• An in-program monitoring system that can track excessive disk usage, container stops and starts, as well as backup status.

Coolify pricing:

• Free - $0. Full feature access, no limitations or restrictions on infrastructure, community support, and automated or self-managed updates.

• Cloud - $5/month for 2 servers; $4/month ($48/year). Unlimited server connections, unlimited deployments, community and email support, and pre-tested updates by the founders before beta release.

Dokploy for self-hosted PaaS with complex workflows

Dokploy is another self-hosting Vercel alternative that provides centralized management and deployment. It offers native Docker Compose support to simplify application and service management, along with multi-server deployment. Easily access logs and monitor system performance and health in real-time, preventing downtime or performance degradation. For custom functionality, use the Dokploy API and CLI to meet your application deployment requirements.

Dokploy key features:

• Template library for open source tools such as Grafana, Supabase, PocketBase, and Cal.com, where you can launch these functions into your applications with one click.

• Database management and backups for MySQL, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, MariaDB, and Redis.

• Built-in Docker Swarm support for multi-node applications.

• User access control with detailed roles and permissions, including owner, admin, and members.

Dokploy pricing:

• Free - $0. Self-hosted infrastructure, community support, core feature access, and unlimited servers.

• Dokploy Plan - $4.50/month; $3.82/month ($45.90/year). Managed hosting, unlimited deployments, databases, applications, users, remote servers monitoring, and priority support.

Vercel alternatives FAQs

What are the best Vercel alternatives for 2026?

The top best option for a Vercel alternative will depend on your specific application requirements and infrastructure needs and top contenders include DigitalOcean, AWS Amplify, Cloudflare Pages + Workers, Netlify, Render, Railway, Heroku, Fly.io, Coolify, and Dokploy.

Which platforms provide serverless deployment like Vercel?

DigitalOcean’s App Platform and AWS Amplify provide hybrid infrastructure deployment options with serverless capabilities. Cloudflare Pages + Workers and Netlify provide serverless PaaS deployment.

Can I deploy Next.js apps on platforms other than Vercel?

Yes, you can deploy Next.js applications on Vercel alternatives such as DigitalOcean, Cloudflare Pages, Netlify, Heroku, Fly.io, Coolify, AWS Amplify, Railway, Render, and Dokploy.

How do developer workflows differ between Vercel and competitors?

The primary difference between Vercel’s workflows and those of its competitors lies in the supported infrastructure (hybrid, containers, self-hosted, serverless), AI integration capabilities, connectivity to CI/CD programs, and the development use cases for which you might use the offerings.

How do Vercel alternatives compare in pricing and free tiers?

Vercel alternatives have a variety of options for both pricing and free tiers. DigitalOcean’s App Platform provides a free tier that supports up to 3 sites, deployment from GitHub and GitLab, as well as a data transfer allowance. For other popular offerings, the difference between the free and paid tiers revolves around how many sites, data storage, and networking, and feature access you are allotted.

Build with DigitalOcean App Platform

DigitalOcean App Platform is the easiest way to build, deploy, and scale apps without managing servers, containers, or complex infrastructure. Push your code to GitHub or GitLab and let App Platform automatically build, deploy, and run your application using a fully managed, globally distributed infrastructure. From web apps and APIs to background workers and static sites, App Platform gives you a streamlined developer experience with predictable pricing, integrated security, and hands-off operations.

Key features:

• Automatic deployments from GitHub and GitLab with built-in CI/CD

• Fully managed infrastructure with zero-config scaling and high availability

• Support for major languages and frameworks: Python, Node.js, Go, PHP, Ruby, and more

• App autoscaling, horizontal scaling, and performance monitoring

• Easy database integration with managed PostgreSQL, MySQL, and Redis

• Global CDN and HTTPS built-in for fast, secure delivery

• Environment variables, secrets management, and private services

• Rollbacks, deploy previews, and infrastructure as code via API and Terraform

Get started with DigitalOcean App Platform and ship your next application faster—without ever touching a server.