Vercel licensing is the set of terms under which Vercel Inc. provides its cloud platform for building, deploying and running web applications. Vercel’s agreements define the “Services” as any products or services Vercel or its affiliates make available, with additional terms for products such as domain registration, the Marketplace, AI products and Flat Rate CDN.[1] Software that Vercel releases exclusively under open source licences, including Next.js, is outside those terms.[1] What a software asset manager buys, therefore, is a subscription to hosted capacity, not an installable licence key.
The grant is a service licence. Under the Terms of Service, Vercel grants “a personal, non-sublicensable, non-exclusive, non-transferable, limited license” to use the Services for internal business or personal purposes “according to the service capacity of your account”.[1] The Enterprise Terms use similar wording but tie the capacity to the “Service Capacity” stated in an Order Form.[2] Catalog proof: Licence is personal, limited and by account capacity.
Editions
Vercel documents three account plans: Hobby, Pro and Enterprise.[3]
| Plan | Who it is for | How it is priced | Deeper article |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hobby | Personal projects and developers | Free, with monthly included allowances per resource; non-commercial use only[4][5] | Terms |
| Pro | Professional developers, freelancers and businesses | $20 per month platform fee including 1 deploying seat and $20 of usage credit; $20 per month per additional paid seat; free Viewer seats; usage on demand[6] | Pro seats and credit |
| Enterprise | Large organisations needing custom limits, isolated build infrastructure and SLAs | Order Form; no public price[7][2] | Spend and commitments |
Catalog: Hobby plan, Pro plan, Enterprise plan.
Hobby
The Hobby plan is free and covers CLI and personal Git integrations, built-in CI/CD, automatic HTTPS and preview deployments, with base resources for Functions, Middleware and Image Optimization.[3] Its distinguishing licence condition is that “You shall only use the Services under a Hobby plan for your personal or non-commercial use.”[1] Vercel defines commercial usage as any deployment used for the financial gain of anyone involved in any part of production, including a paid employee or consultant writing the code.[5] Hobby teams are paused, rather than billed, when included usage is exceeded.[3]
Pro
Pro introduces paid seats and a credit-based system. The platform fee is $20 per month and includes one deploying seat and $20 of monthly usage credit.[6] Additional Owner or Member seats cost $20 per month each, while Viewer seats with read-only access are free and unlimited.[6] Usage beyond the credit is billed on demand.[6] Pro teams can buy add-ons such as SAML single sign-on at $300 per month, a HIPAA business associate agreement at $350 per month and Password Protection at $20 per month per project.[6]
Enterprise
The Enterprise plan adds custom limits, isolated build infrastructure, SSO and SAML, Directory Sync, role-based access control, audit logs, service level agreements and a dedicated Vercel success manager.[7] Enterprise pricing is set on an Order Form: subscription fees and Service Capacity are paid annually in advance, and additional usage is paid in arrears.[2] Enterprise teams can instead use the Flexible Commitment plan, a prepaid balance in which each unit is valued at $1.00 USD.[8]
Metrics
Vercel’s licence metrics fall in two families. Seat metrics count people. Usage metrics count consumed resources.
| Metric | What is counted | Plan behaviour |
|---|---|---|
| Deploying team seat | Team members with the Owner or Member role | $20 per month each beyond the one included on Pro[6] |
| Viewer seat | Read-only Pro Viewer users | Free on Pro; cannot configure or deploy[6] |
| Active CPU | CPU time code actively consumes | 4 hours included on Hobby; on demand on Pro[9] |
| Provisioned Memory | GB-hours of instance memory | 360 GB-hours included on Hobby[9] |
| Fast Data Transfer | Data between CDN and visitors | First 100 GB on Hobby; Flat Rate CDN or on demand on Pro[9] |
Regional resources are priced by the region in which the project runs, for example Fast Data Transfer from $0.15 to $0.35 per GB and CDN requests from $2.00 to $3.20 per million.[10] The usage-based resources article covers the full resource list.
Counting and floors
The Pro plan has a floor of one paid seat and the $20 platform fee. The $20 credit expires at the end of the month and resets at the start of the next.[6] Because the credit is shared across resources, a Pro team does not hold separate quotas per resource.[6] Hobby teams, by contrast, receive per-resource allowances.[4]
Each user needs unique login credentials, which the Terms of Service forbid sharing between users.[1] Role design matters: the Pro Viewer role cannot see observability and log data, team settings, or detailed usage and billing data.[11]
Virtualization and partitioning
Vercel is a multi-tenant service, so virtualization and partitioning rules do not apply. The nearest analogues are resale and service-bureau restrictions. The Terms of Service bar the customer from sublicensing, reselling, renting or otherwise commercially exploiting the Services for any third party, and from using them for timesharing or service-bureau purposes.[1] The Enterprise Terms contain the same prohibitions.[2] An agency hosting client sites should check how its own contract and plan address this clause.
Cloud and BYOL
There is no bring-your-own-licence mechanism for the platform itself. Bring-your-own-key exists only for AI providers behind AI Gateway, where there is no markup or fee from AI Gateway on the paid tier.[12] AI products are additionally governed by the AI Product Terms, which Schedule I of the Terms of Service incorporates.[13][1] See Vercel AI products licensing.
Programs
- Pro monthly credit and Spend Management. Pro and Enterprise Flexible Commitment teams can set a spend amount that notifies, triggers a webhook or pauses production deployments.[14]
- Flat Rate CDN. A Pro feature that replaces per-unit CDN billing with a monthly capacity tier of $20, $100 or $300 above the included tier.[15]
- Flexible Commitment. A prepaid Enterprise balance valued at $1.00 per unit.[8]
- Enterprise SLA and support. Vercel targets 99.99% availability for Enterprise, with service credits up to 50% of the monthly fee, and commits to response targets only for Enterprise subscriptions.[16][17]
Audits and compliance
The Terms of Service and Enterprise Terms retrieved for this article contain no software audit clause. Compliance instead operates through metering and suspension: Vercel may terminate an account immediately if it exceeds Vercel limits on retention, storage, compute capacity or network transfer,[1] and under the Enterprise Terms may terminate on fifteen days’ written notice if the customer exceeds Service Capacity and does not pay.[2] Vercel may also charge accrued fees early when it detects “elevated, irregular, high or anomalous use”.[1]
Out of scope
- Negotiated Enterprise Order Forms, statements of work and reseller terms, which are not public.
- Marketplace products and third-party integrations, which are governed by their own providers’ terms.[1]
- Domain registration, governed by a separate addendum referenced from Schedule I of the Terms of Service.[1]
- Open source software released by Vercel, such as Next.js, which sits under its own open source licences.[1]