The short answer
- Moving from Vercel Pro to Cloudflare (free tier) at 1 seat saves $190 in the first year, after setup and upkeep time (Stackcut's model: modeled, not measured).
- Cloudflare's official migration guide moves 1 kind of data in full and 3 partly; 3 things stay behind. What moves
- 5 public accounts of making this switch: 5 switched. Read them
- 2 comparison pages checked, each labeled with who wrote it. What they claim
What Vercel and Cloudflare cost
List prices from each vendor's pricing page, as stored in the Stackcut catalog. Each price links its source.
| Plan | Billed monthly | Billed yearly (per month) | What you get |
|---|---|---|---|
| Vercel Pro | $20/user/mo | not shown | $20/month platform fee with 1 deploying seat and $20 of monthly usage credit (extra deploying seats $20/month each; viewer seats free); Flat Rate CDN base tier included: 1M CDN requests and 1 TB data transfer a month (next tiers $20/month for 10M requests and 50 TB, $100 for 50M, $300 for 150M; a tier moves up at the next billing cycle); on demand: Fast Data Transfer $0.15/GB, Edge Requests $2 per 1M, Fluid Active CPU from $0.128/hour, provisioned memory from $0.0106/GB-hour, function invocations $0.60 per 1M; unlimited projects; 6,000 deployments a day; default spend alert at $200 |
| Cloudflare Pro | $25/mo | $20/mo | Per domain; image optimization; for professional websites |
| Cloudflare Business | $250/mo | $200/mo | Per domain; PCI DSS compliance; 100% uptime SLA |
| Cloudflare Workers Paid | $5/mo | not shown | 10M requests/mo then $0.30 per additional million; 30M CPU ms/mo then $0.02 per additional million CPU ms; up to 5 min CPU per invocation |
- Vercel free plan: Hobby: personal, non-commercial use only; 1 developer seat; 100 GB Fast Data Transfer, 1M Edge Requests, 4 CPU-hours Active CPU, 360 GB-hours provisioned memory, 1M function invocations, 5,000 image transformations a month; 200 projects; 100 deployments a day; 1 hour of runtime logs; a feature that hits its limit pauses for up to 30 days vercel.com
- Cloudflare free plan: Free plan: DNS, CDN, SSL, DDoS. Workers Free: 100,000 requests/day, 10 ms CPU per invocation. R2 free: 10 GB-month storage, 1M Class A / 10M Class B ops developers.cloudflare.com
Start with static versus dynamic
A static export is a narrower migration than a server-rendered application. Cloudflare’s Pages guide is specifically for static Next.js sites; do not use it as proof that dynamic routes or account flows will run unchanged. developers.cloudflare.com
Workers is the dynamic application path to evaluate. The current Next.js guide recommends vinext, explicitly in beta, and asks you to check compatibility; existing OpenNext and static Pages paths remain documented for their respective cases. developers.cloudflare.com
Identify the runtime and service dependencies
- Workers supports a subset of Node.js APIs, with compatibility behavior documented per API. Review the packages and server-side calls your application actually executes; installing a package does not prove its runtime calls are supported. developers.cloudflare.com
- Map Vercel routing, asset and configuration behavior to the Workers deployment rather than assuming Git imports all platform settings. Cloudflare provides a dedicated Vercel-to-Workers migration guide. developers.cloudflare.com
- List the Vercel-managed rendering, cache and image features in use, plus attached services. Keep them in the acceptance criteria so a cheaper compute route does not quietly remove part of the product. vercel.com
Prove a candidate before moving live traffic
For vinext, run the official compatibility check and review any gaps before adopting it for an existing production app. Treat that report as an input to your own checks, not a substitute for account, payment and data flows. developers.cloudflare.com
- Deploy a candidate, compare redirects and asset paths, and run the live application journeys against it before changing the domain. Preserve the former deployment until the destination is verified. developers.cloudflare.com
- Exercise database clients and other server libraries under the destination runtime, including error and reconnect paths. Node.js compatibility is an API-specific contract, not a promise of a conventional server process. developers.cloudflare.com
Compare requests, compute and attached services
Workers pricing includes request and compute dimensions, with static asset billing treated separately. Use the application’s real traffic shape and CPU work when comparing it with a Vercel seat-and-usage bill. developers.cloudflare.com
Include any database, object storage, image or other services you would retain or add. This page’s catalog comparisons do not price every possible stack or the time spent adapting the app. recipe
Keep Vercel when the adaptation does not pay back
If the candidate leaves a runtime dependency, framework feature or production integration unresolved, keep the current host while addressing that gap. The migration guide is documentation of a route, not evidence that your own app is ready to switch. developers.cloudflare.com
A lower modeled hosting charge is only useful after including setup and upkeep. Prefer a narrow move, such as a separately deployable static site, when that removes a real cost without reopening every application integration. recipe
What comparison pages say
Each claim as the page makes it, and who it favors. Vendor pages are labeled; weigh them accordingly.
2 pages compared, 1 of them written by one of the two vendors. Claims are the pages' own, paraphrased; prices in them may be older than the catalog prices above.
| About | The page says | Favors | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Price | Cloudflare offers unlimited bandwidth for about $5 a month versus Vercel bills that reach $330 or more once overages hit. | Cloudflare | BuildMVPFast independent |
| Performance | Cloudflare's V8 isolates cold-start in under 5ms versus 50 to 200ms for Vercel's Lambda-based functions. | Cloudflare | BuildMVPFast independent |
| Features | Vercel supports ISR, PPR and Server Actions from day one; Cloudflare needs the OpenNext adapter to reach the same feature set. | Vercel | BuildMVPFast independent |
| Ease of use | Vercel deploys with a plain GitHub push, while Cloudflare requires Wrangler configuration, which the article calls more friction. | Vercel | BuildMVPFast independent |
| Features | Next.js support requires Cloudflare's OpenNext adapter and lacks Node.js middleware; Vercel's support is native, in-house and always current. | Vercel | Vercel vendor page |
| Performance | Vercel's ISR purges its cache globally in about 300ms; Cloudflare needs manually configured R2 buckets and Durable Objects for the same job. | Vercel | Vercel vendor page |
| Limits | Cloudflare Workers run in fixed 128MB V8 isolates; Vercel functions offer full Node.js with up to 4GB of configurable memory. | Vercel | Vercel vendor page |
| Price | Cloudflare's Workers Paid plan is $5 a month with 10 million included requests, undercutting Vercel's usage-based pricing. | Cloudflare | Vercel vendor page |
Moving from Vercel to Cloudflare
What Cloudflare's importer carries over, what it leaves behind, and any help it offers switchers.
To Cloudflare
Official guide developers.cloudflare.com · Tools: Wrangler, @opennextjs/cloudflare, vinext
Moves: Static build output (full); SSR, API routes, Server Components and Server Actions (partial); ISR (partial); Middleware (partial). developers.cloudflare.com
Doesn't move: The Edge Runtime (export const runtime = 'edge') is not supported by OpenNext and must be removed; Vercel Cron Jobs, Web Analytics and preview-deployment PR comments have no direct equivalent and must be rebuilt separately; Automatic image optimization needs a separate Cloudflare Images binding instead of the default Vercel-backed loader. developers.cloudflare.com
Watch out for:
- Cloudflare's own generic migration guide says Vercel-specific features aren't supported and points to framework-specific guides for Next.js instead developers.cloudflare.com
- Cloudflare now steers new projects to a newer tool, vinext, over OpenNext, though OpenNext is what every real switch found in this research used developers.cloudflare.com
- First attempts (wrong compatibility_date, missing incrementalCache, next-on-pages instead of OpenNext) repeatedly cost independent switchers hours to days developers.cloudflare.com
From each destination's own migration docs and switching pages, plus community write-ups where no official guide exists, each checked against its page. Confirm terms on the linked page before you rely on an offer.
People who moved from Vercel to Cloudflare
5 public accounts of leaving Vercel: 5 switched. Summaries are ours; each links the original, and each was checked against its page before it appeared here.
A 3-person team cut Vercel build and hosting costs from over $330/month to $5/month on Cloudflare Workers via the OpenNext adapter, migrating in hours with no code changes but losing several of Vercel's built-in conveniences. Silvermine AI
Migrated to Cloudflare Workers for cold starts and cost, but the first attempt using @cloudflare/next-on-pages wasted days on Edge Runtime and bundle-size errors before switching to OpenNext with nodejs_compat and KV caching. Kayhan Babaee
Moved a Next.js app off Vercel over rising, unpredictable costs; the OpenNext adapter needed few code changes but hit a missing incrementalCache config and a bad compatibility date before working, and Cloudflare's DX still trails Vercel's. Harrison Milbradt
Left Vercel after cold starts, build times and pricing all got worse on modest traffic ($20 to $80/month); rewrote middleware and API routes for Workers and lost automatic image optimization, but ended up well below the old Vercel bill. DevlinkStudios
A client was billed $1,900 for one month on Vercel between per-seat pricing and add-on fees like the firewall; the author moved the Next.js app to Cloudflare Workers via OpenNext with R2 storage for portability. Prateek Jain
How to leave Vercel
Export first, then cancel. Every step links the vendor's own help page, checked on the date shown.
How to leave Vercel
Export first
- Invoices: Team → Settings → Invoices → download each PDF (PDF). Invoices are also emailed to the team's invoice recipient; keep those emails. vercel.com
What you lose
- Team members other than the original owner
- Commercial use, on Hobby
Cancel
- Download every invoice PDF you need: a deleted team's invoice history can't be recovered.
- Move connected Stores and Domains to their new home first; the downgrade flow requires it.
- Dashboard → your team → Settings → Billing → Plan → Downgrade Plan.
- Refunds
- Not stated for a downgrade. Each invoice charges the coming cycle plus the previous cycle's extra usage.
- After you cancel
- All active members except the original owner are removed. Each account can have only one Hobby team, so you may have to delete or merge a team.
FAQ
Is Cloudflare cheaper than Vercel?
Modeled, not measured: moving from Vercel Pro to Cloudflare (free tier) at 1 seat saves $190 in the first year, after setup and upkeep time at $50/hour. It depends on your plan, seats and usage. the math
Can I move my Vercel data to Cloudflare?
Cloudflare's official guide moves: Static build output; SSR, API routes, Server Components and Server Actions; ISR; Middleware. It doesn't move: The Edge Runtime (export const runtime = 'edge') is not supported by OpenNext and must be removed; Vercel Cron Jobs, Web Analytics and preview-deployment PR comments have no direct equivalent and must be rebuilt separately; Automatic image optimization needs a separate Cloudflare Images binding instead of the default Vercel-backed loader. developers.cloudflare.com
What do I lose when I leave Vercel?
Per Vercel's own pages, leaving or downgrading loses: Team members other than the original owner; Commercial use, on Hobby. vercel.com
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find_alternatives({"vendor": "Vercel"})