The Vercel Terms of Service and the Vercel Enterprise Terms and Conditions are the two master agreements under which Vercel Inc. provides its platform. The Terms of Service bind anyone who uses or accesses the Services, including Hobby and self-service Pro customers.[1] The Enterprise Terms bind a customer that signs an Order Form or Statement of Work referencing them.[2] Both are supplemented by the Acceptable Use Policy, product-specific schedules, the Support Terms and, for Enterprise customers, a service level agreement.[1][2] This article explains the licence clauses that matter for software asset management. Prices and seats are covered in Vercel Pro seats and monthly credit and usage-based resources.
Editions
Which agreement applies depends on how the account was opened.
| Account | Governing agreement | Order of precedence signal |
|---|---|---|
| Hobby | Terms of Service, with Hobby-specific section 4[1] | Not applicable |
| Pro (self-service) | Terms of Service; pricing and entitlements at vercel.com/pricing[1] | Not applicable |
| Enterprise | Enterprise Terms, Order Form and any Statement of Work[2] | Support Terms note that separately negotiated agreements may supersede their scope[3] |
The Terms of Service state that “Vercel offers access to the Services through various plans”, list a free Hobby plan and paid self-service subscriptions, and direct enterprise customers to contact Vercel separately.[1]
Metrics
Neither master agreement defines a named-user or device metric. Capacity is defined by the plan and by the Order Form.
- Terms of Service. The licence is “according to the service capacity of your account”.[1] Each user must have unique login credentials that must not be shared by multiple users.[1] This is the only user-count style control: seats are a commercial construct in the plan documentation, not a defined term in the Terms. See the Deploying team seat and Viewer seat metrics.
- Enterprise Terms. The licence is “based on the service capacity set forth in the applicable Order Form” and in line with the Documentation.[2]
Catalog proof: Each user needs unique credentials; Enterprise licence is by Order Form Service Capacity.
Counting and floors
Licence grant and restrictions
The Terms of Service grant is “personal, non-sublicensable, non-exclusive, non-transferable, limited” and limited to “your internal business or personal purposes”.[1] Section 11 prohibits, directly or indirectly, sublicensing, reselling, renting, leasing, transferring or otherwise commercially exploiting the Services or making them available to a third party, and using them for timesharing or service bureau purposes or for the benefit of a third party.[1] The Enterprise Terms contain the same prohibition in section 6.[2] The Acceptable Use Policy repeats that a customer may not “rent, lease, loan, or sell access” to the Services, nor develop a similar or competing product with them.[4] See No resale or service-bureau use.
The Hobby plan clause
Section 4 provides that the Hobby plan is offered “at our sole discretion”, that use is for personal or non-commercial use only, that Vercel may change features or discontinue the plan, and that it may remove or shut down Hobby projects “with or without notice”.[1] The Fair Use Guidelines supply the test for commercial use: 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] Payment requests, advertising a product or service, receiving payment to create, update or host the site, sites whose primary purpose is affiliate linking, and advertisements all count; donations do not.[5] Catalog proof: Commercial usage definition.
Fair use and unacceptable use
The Fair Use Guidelines state that circumventing or misusing limits or usage guidelines is a violation, and they point to the Terms of Service or an Enterprise Service Agreement for acceptable use.[5] The Acceptable Use Policy lists prohibited activities, including scraping, proxying, acting as a VPN, hosting media for hot-linking and circumventing the Fair Use Guidelines or rate limits.[4] Violation is a material breach and Vercel may restrict, suspend or terminate access immediately upon notice.[4] Customers may run benchmark tests of non-AI services if public results include the information needed to replicate them.[4]
Content and AI training
For a Hobby plan or trial Pro plan, the customer agrees that Vercel may use Your Content to train its AI and machine learning models and share it with third parties for the same purpose. On a paid Pro plan that Model Training is not enabled by default and may be opted into; it can be opted out through team settings or by upgrading to Enterprise.[1] This is a data right, not a licence metric, but procurement and security reviewers should record it per plan.
Virtualization and partitioning
Not applicable. The Terms do not address deployment topology because the customer does not install Vercel software. Section 9 does allocate responsibility: the customer must configure Services per the Documentation and keep its own backups, and the Enterprise Terms refer to a shared responsibility model.[1][2]
Cloud and BYOL
There is no licence portability. Third-party services reached through Vercel, such as Marketplace integrations and AI providers in AI Gateway, are “Non-Vercel Services” governed by the third party’s terms, and Vercel’s support terms do not apply to them.[1] Customers are also bound by the actions and costs of any AI-powered or third-party tools they authorise to access the Services.[1] Catalog proof: Customer bears costs incurred by third-party tools and agents.
Programs
Fees, renewal and termination
| Topic | Terms of Service (Hobby, Pro) | Enterprise Terms |
|---|---|---|
| Billing | Self-service subscription in advance; used or added Services in arrears; non-recurring Services immediately; automatic charge to the payment method on record[1] | Subscription fees and Service Capacity annually in advance; additional usage in arrears within 30 days of invoice[2] |
| Renewal | Auto-renews for the same term unless cancelled before the renewal date[1] | Order Form renews for terms equal to the initial term unless either party gives written notice at least 60 calendar days before expiry[2] |
| Capacity increase | Upgrade any time; a downgrade is effective at the next renewal date[1] | New Order Form, pro-rated for the remainder of the term[2] |
| Price changes | Effective at the start of the next payment period, with written notice for affected Services[1] | Effective at the start of the next Order Form or Statement of Work[2] |
| Overuse | May terminate immediately if the customer exceeds Vercel limits on retention, storage, compute or transfer[1] | May terminate on 15 days notice if Service Capacity is exceeded and not paid for[2] |
| Breach | Ten days notice (two days for non-payment)[1] | Thirty days notice if curable[2] |
Two Terms of Service clauses are unusual for a software asset manager. First, if Vercel detects “elevated, irregular, high or anomalous use”, in its sole discretion, it may automatically charge the payment method for accrued fees.[1] Second, all fees are non-refundable except as stated, and Vercel will refund the pro-rated unearned portion of prepaid fees only if it terminates a self-service subscription without cause.[1] Catalog proof: Self-service subscriptions auto-renew; Enterprise Order Forms renew unless 60 days notice.
Support terms
Support Services are provided “commercially reasonable”, during Vercel’s normal business hours, and Vercel only commits to respond to customers with an Enterprise subscription using target response guidelines. Standard Severity 1 is under 4 business hours, and Premium Severity 1 is under 2 hours around the clock.[3] Support does not include debugging custom or third-party code.[3] Requests for billing amendments must be made within one month of the invoice or receipt.[3] The Enterprise Terms commit Vercel to provide support under these terms; the Terms of Service say Vercel “may, but is not required to”.[2][1]
Service level agreement
The SLA is titled “Enterprise Service Level Agreement”. Vercel will use commercially reasonable efforts to make the platform available 99.99% of the time, excluding Excused Downtime.[6] Credits are 10% of the monthly fee for uptime of 99.1% to 99.98%, 25% for 95% to 99% and 50% below 95%, capped at 50% of the amount due for the month; the customer must notify Vercel within 30 days with log files, and credits are the sole and exclusive remedy.[6] The SLA does not cover components such as the APIs and CLI.[6] See Enterprise SLA.
Schedule I addenda
Schedule I of the Terms of Service attaches additional terms for domain name registration, the Marketplace, Non-Vercel Services, AI Products and Services, the Digital Operational Resilience Act, API use and Flat Rate CDN.[1] The Flat Rate CDN schedule lets Vercel move a team to a higher tier or to pay-as-you-go rates at the next billing cycle and, if fair use guidelines are breached, reduce performance or disable the tier.[1][7] AI Products are governed by the separate AI Product Terms.[8]
Audits and compliance
The Terms of Service and the Enterprise Terms retrieved on 2026-10-08 contain no clause that gives Vercel a right to audit the customer’s use against its entitlements, and neither contains true-up language.[1][2] Enforcement relies on metering and on remedies: suspension of Hobby projects, automatic charging of accrued fees, overdue-account restrictions and termination for exceeding limits.[1][9] For a Pro account whose renewal payment fails, new projects, new team members and redeploys are blocked and, if payment is not made within 14 days, all deployments are paused.[9]
The Terms of Service also bar hosting Protected Health Information or HIPAA-subject information without Vercel’s prior written approval, and place PCI DSS compliance responsibility on the customer.[1]
Disputes
Under the Terms of Service the agreement is governed by California law, with a 60-day informal dispute process followed by binding JAMS arbitration and a class action waiver, subject to a 30-day opt-out by written notice.[1]
Out of scope
- The Professional Services Terms, Domain Name Registration terms, DORA Addendum, API Terms and Data Processing Addendum, which this article does not analyse.
- Negotiated Order Forms and reseller or marketplace purchase terms.
- Open source licences of software Vercel publishes, which the Terms of Service exclude.[1]