Vercel vs AWS
Kofi Agyem, Founder and CEO, CloudzyroPublished · Updated
Vercel and AWS side by side: a managed platform against a cloud you assemble yourself, on free plans, team pricing and billing, from each company's own pages, with Cloudzyro as a third option.
| Feature | Vercel | AWS | Cloudzyro |
|---|---|---|---|
| What it is | A platform for frontends and functions | A cloud of many services; Amplify Hosting for web apps | Hosting for sites and web apps, at a flat price per site |
| Free to start | Hobby: personal, non-commercial use only | New customers get up to $200 in Free Tier credits | Launch: free, business use included |
| Team pricing | Pro: $20 a month per developer seat | Amplify: no pay-per-seat pricing | Never per seat |
| How you're billed | Seats, plus usage beyond Pro's included amounts | Each service by use, with no monthly minimums | Flat: compute and traffic included |
| Backend | Functions on Vercel's platform | Lambda, DynamoDB, Cognito, S3 and more, each priced separately | Your Node.js server; bring your own database |
Other companies' figures from Vercel pricing, AWS Amplify pricing, checked November 1, 2026. Prices change, so check their pages before you decide.
The short answer
Vercel is a platform: you push your code and it handles builds, hosting and functions, for $20 a month per developer seat on Pro. AWS is a cloud: you choose and connect services yourself, such as Amplify Hosting for the frontend and Lambda, DynamoDB, Cognito or S3 behind it, and pay for each one as you use it.
Vercel suits teams who want one place to ship. AWS suits teams who want everything inside their own AWS account and are happy to put the pieces together. Cloudzyro is a third option: your site or app runs as a long-lived server at a flat price per site.
Free plans
Vercel's Hobby plan is free for personal, non-commercial use, with 100 GB of transfer and 4 hours of active CPU for functions a month, and it can't buy more.
On AWS, new customers since July 15, 2025 get up to $200 in Free Tier credits. A free plan lasts 6 months, and credits must be used within 12 months. Amplify Hosting also lists free amounts each month, including 1,000 build minutes and 15 GB served.
Cloudzyro's Launch plan is free with business use allowed, and sites never sleep.
What a team pays
Vercel Pro is $20 a month per developer seat, with a $20 usage credit and 1 TB of transfer included; viewer seats are free. A team of three developers pays $60 a month before usage.
AWS Amplify has no pay-per-seat pricing. You pay for each service: on Amplify Hosting, $0.01 per build minute, $0.023 per GB stored, $0.15 per GB served, and $0.30 per million server-rendered requests. Backend services such as Lambda and DynamoDB are billed on their own price lists.
Cloudzyro Boost is $20 a month per site with the team included, 2 CPUs, 2 GB of memory and 1 TB of traffic.
Platform or cloud?
With Vercel, the platform makes most decisions for you, and your bill is seats plus usage. With AWS, you get far more building blocks and control, and you're the one who connects them, watches the bill and keeps them secure. A bill on AWS has more lines, because each service is priced separately.
Cloudzyro sits closer to Vercel in how little you manage, but runs your app as an always-on server and never charges for traffic: a site past its allowance is slowed for the rest of the month and stays online.
Which should you choose?
Choose Vercel if you want a polished platform for Next.js and frontends and per-seat pricing suits your team. Choose AWS if your company already runs on it, you need services Vercel doesn't offer, or you want everything in your own AWS account. Choose Cloudzyro if you want your website or web app always on, free to start and then one flat price per site, deployed from Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor, Codex, Git or a zip.