Vercel Hobby 計劃在 2026 年涵蓋哪些內容？是否免費？

Yes, for personal projects. Vercel's Hobby plan costs $0, but it is for personal, non-commercial use only. Once anyone involved makes money from a project, including a freelancer paid to build it, Vercel expects it on Pro at $20 per developer seat a month. Hobby usage is also capped. You can't pay for more, and a project that hits a limit usually waits 30 days before that feature works again.

TL;DR

• Hobby is $0 with one developer seat, for personal and non-commercial projects.
• Ads, payments, affiliate sites and being paid to build or host the site all count as commercial. Asking for donations does not.
• Each month includes 100 GB of transfer, 1M function invocations, 4 hours of active CPU and 360 GB-hours of function memory.
• Past a limit you can't buy more usage, and in most cases the feature stays off for 30 days.
• Cron jobs run at most once a day, a function run stops at 300 seconds, and runtime logs keep one hour.
• Pro is $20 per developer seat a month with $20 of usage included. Vercel pricing explained works through Pro bills line by line.

What does the Vercel Hobby plan include?

Fast Data Transfer is what Vercel's CDN sends to visitors. For a blog or a portfolio it is the line that matters, and 100 GB is a lot of page views for a personal site.

The function lines start to count once the project has server code: API routes, server rendering and middleware. Active CPU only counts time the CPU is working. Provisioned memory counts the whole run, including time spent waiting on a database, so it tends to run out first.

What other limits does Hobby have?

Builds stop at 45 minutes on every plan.

Two of these limits bite first on real apps. The 300-second cap ends any single function run, so a long export, a slow report or a model call that streams past five minutes gets cut off. The one-hour log window means an error from last night is gone by the time you look in the morning.

Hobby is also one person. You can't add a teammate to a Hobby account, so the moment a second developer needs to deploy, the project moves to Pro.

What counts as commercial use on Vercel?

Vercel's fair use rules call a deployment commercial when it is used for the financial gain of anyone involved in any part of its production. That includes a paid employee or consultant who writes the code. Vercel's own examples:

• the site asks visitors for payment or processes payments
• the site advertises a product or service for sale
• someone is paid to create, update or host the site
• the site exists mainly to carry affiliate links
• the site shows ads, such as Google AdSense

Asking for donations is allowed on Hobby.

The test looks at the people around the project as well as the site itself. A freelancer building a client's marketing page on Hobby is breaking the rule even if the page sells nothing, because the freelancer is paid for it. A personal portfolio or an open-source docs site with a donate button fits Hobby.

What happens when you hit a Hobby limit?

You can't buy extra usage on Hobby. When a project goes past an allowance, Vercel says that in most cases you have to wait 30 days before you can use that feature again. Web Analytics is the exception: collection resumes after 7 days.

That wait hurts most on a side project that suddenly gets traffic. The capped feature stays off until the 30 days pass or you move the project to Pro, where usage past the $20 credit bills pay as you go.

Can you run cron jobs and background work on Hobby?

Cron jobs work, with tight limits. A project can have 100 of them, and on Hobby each one runs at most once a day. Timing is per hour: a job set for 08:00 runs some time between 08:00 and 08:59. A more frequent schedule fails the deploy. Pro runs cron jobs down to once a minute.

Background work is the harder fit. Vercel runs server code as functions that start on a request and stop at the duration limit. A queue consumer, a Discord or Telegram bot that holds a connection open, or a job that runs for an hour needs to live on a host that keeps a process running.

Where do Hobby functions run?

New projects run functions in Washington, D.C. (iad1) by default. Hobby gets one function region, and you can change it in the project's settings or with regions in vercel.json. Mumbai (bom1) and Frankfurt (fra1) are both on the list.

That setting matters for anyone outside the US. A function in Washington that queries a database in Frankfurt or Mumbai pays the round trip on every query. Put the function region next to your database before you judge how fast the app feels.

When is the Hobby plan enough?

When to stay on Vercel

If the project is a frontend that fits the Hobby rules, stay. Static pages, image optimization and Next.js features run well there, and moving a working site to save nothing makes little sense.

The same goes for a commercial frontend on Pro. For a team, $20 a seat is small next to the time it would take to run a CDN and preview deployments yourself. Ownkube has no CDN in front of the app and no per-branch preview deployments, so a frontend that leans on either belongs on Vercel.

What does the same backend cost on Ownkube?

Ownkube has no free plan for Compute. The smallest start is a $5 top-up on Pay as you go. Personal is $5 a month and loads $5 of credit, and Team is $20 a month and loads $20. Credit never expires.

A small API with Postgres, running around the clock in the Germany region:

In the Mumbai region the same 50 GB of transfer bills at $0.13 per GB, so the total is about $18.50. You pick the region when you deploy.

The app is a long-running process, so it has no 300-second cap. Workers run continuously, and scheduled jobs take any cron expression with a time zone. If the app is idle for long stretches, sleep is opt-in: a sleeping app bills nothing for compute and a sleeping database bills storage only. When the wallet runs out, apps pause and keep their data until you top up, so the most a month can cost is what you loaded.

Backups are 7-day point-in-time restore on Personal and Team, turned on per database. Pay as you go has no backups.

Checklist before you pick a plan

• Does anyone make money from this project, including the person building it? Then it needs Pro or another host.
• Does any job run longer than 300 seconds or more often than once a day?
• Is the function region next to the database?
• Would a 30-day pause on a feature hurt your users?
• Do you need logs older than one hour?
• Will a second developer need to deploy?

If every answer is no, Hobby is a good home. If several are yes, price Pro with Vercel pricing explained, or compare hosts that run the backend and database together in Vercel alternatives.

FAQ

Is Vercel free forever?

The Hobby plan has no trial period. It stays $0 as long as the project is personal, non-commercial and inside the allowances.

Can I use Vercel Hobby for a client site?

No. Being paid to build, update or host a site counts as commercial use under Vercel's rules, even when the site itself sells nothing.

Can I show ads on a Vercel Hobby site?

No. Ads such as AdSense count as commercial use. Asking visitors for donations is allowed.

What happens if I exceed Vercel's free tier?

You can't buy more usage on Hobby. In most cases the feature you went over stays unavailable for 30 days, and Web Analytics resumes after 7. Upgrading to Pro lifts the caps.

Does Vercel have a Pro trial?

Yes. Vercel offers a Pro trial, and after it Pro is $20 per developer seat a month with $20 of usage included.

Can I host a backend on Vercel for free?

Short API calls, yes, within 1M invocations, 4 hours of active CPU and the 300-second limit per run. Workers, bots and long jobs need a host that keeps a process running. Free tiers on Railway, Render and Fly.io covers the other free options.

Where Ownkube fits

Keep a personal frontend on Vercel's Hobby plan if it fits. When the project turns commercial, needs a worker or a job that runs past five minutes, or needs its Postgres next to the app, Ownkube runs the whole backend in Mumbai or Germany from a prepaid wallet. Deploy my first app.