Render vs Vercel
Kofi Agyem, Founder and CEO, CloudzyroPublished
Render and Vercel side by side on price, limits and how they charge, from each company's own pricing pages, with Cloudzyro as a third option.
| Feature | Render | Vercel | Cloudzyro |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free plan | Free web services that spin down after 15 minutes | Hobby: personal, non-commercial use only | Launch: free, business use included |
| Paid plan | Pro: $25 a month flat, plus compute | Pro: $20 a month per developer seat | Boost: $20 a month per site, compute included |
| Extra traffic | $0.15 per GB | From $0.15 per GB beyond 1 TB on Pro | Never charged; slowed past the allowance |
| Charged per team member | No, a flat fee since April 2026 | Yes, per developer seat | Never |
Other companies' figures from Render: updated workspace plans, Render: free instances, Vercel pricing, checked October 31, 2026. Prices change, so check their pages before you decide.
The short answer
Render runs long-lived services: web servers, background workers and scheduled jobs, with a flat $25 Pro workspace fee plus the compute each service uses. Vercel is built around frontends and serverless functions, with $20 a month per developer seat on Pro. Cloudzyro runs your site or app as a long-lived server too, for a flat $20 a month per site with the team included.
Free plans
Render's free web services spin down after 15 minutes without traffic and take about a minute to wake, and each workspace gets 750 free instance hours a month. Vercel's Hobby plan is for personal, non-commercial use, with 100 GB of transfer a month. Cloudzyro's free Launch plan allows business use, and sites never sleep.
Pricing for a small team
For three people on one app: Render Pro is $25 a month plus the app's compute; Vercel Pro is $60 a month in seats plus usage beyond the included amounts; Cloudzyro Boost is $20 a month with 2 CPUs, 2 GB of memory and 1 TB of traffic included.
Which should you choose?
Choose Render if you need workers, cron jobs or databases it runs for you alongside your app. Choose Vercel if your frontend leans on its platform features. Choose Cloudzyro if you want your site or app always on, at a flat price per site, deployed straight from your AI tool, Git or a zip.