Vercel vs Netlify vs Cloudflare Pages: I Deployed the Same App to All 3 Free Tiers — One Is a Trap

Description and use

Cloudflare Pages offers unlimited bandwidth, no commercial use restrictions, and the fastest TTFB among the free tiers, making it the preferred choice for commercial projects. Vercel is best for bleeding‑edge Next.js features, while Netlify excels in form handling and split testing but has limited build minutes.

Problem

Choosing a free hosting tier for a Next.js app with ~40 pages, API routes, and 15k monthly visitors while avoiding commercial use restrictions and ensuring good performance.

Outcome

Cloudflare Pages offers unlimited bandwidth, no commercial use restriction, and the fastest TTFB (97 ms) among the three free tiers, making it the preferred choice for commercial projects. Vercel is best for bleeding-edge Next.js features, while Netlify excels in form handling and split testing but has limited build minutes.

Workflow

• Deploy the same Next.js app to Vercel Hobby, Netlify Free, and Cloudflare Pages free tiers.
• Run the app for 90 days, collecting metrics on bandwidth, build minutes, serverless invocations, and performance (TTFB).
• Track any upgrade pressure emails received from each provider.
• Analyze the collected data and compare the results.
• Make a decision based on commercial use policy, performance, and feature set.
• Migrate projects to the chosen provider if necessary.
• Monitor post-migration performance and billing.

Evidence

Vercel Hobby: 100GB bandwidth, 6,000 build minutes, 125k serverless invocations, commercial use not allowed.

Source

Cloudflare Pages: Unlimited bandwidth, 500 builds/month, 3M serverless invocations/month, commercial use allowed.

Source

TTFB from Frankfurt: Vercel 184ms, Netlify 231ms, Cloudflare 97ms.

Source