No ads, no payments, no client work on Hobby. Vercel restricts Hobby to non-commercial personal use. Commercial means any deployment used for anyone's financial gain: taking payments, advertising a product or service, being paid to build or host the site, a site whose main purpose is affiliate links, or ads such as Google AdSense. Asking for donations is allowed. Anything commercial needs Pro ($20/month per developer seat, with $20 of usage credit included) or Enterprise.
How does Vercel define commercial use?
Vercel's Fair Use Guidelines say Hobby teams are restricted to non-commercial personal use, and all commercial usage requires a Pro or Enterprise plan. Commercial usage is “any Deployment that is used for the purpose of financial gain of anyone involved in any part of the production of the project, including a paid employee or consultant writing the code.” Vercel's examples:
- Any method of requesting or processing payment from visitors of the site
- Advertising the sale of a product or service
- Receiving payment to create, update, or host the site
- Affiliate linking is the primary purpose of the site
- The inclusion of advertisements, including online advertising platforms like Google AdSense
Asking for donations doesn't count as commercial use. If you're unsure, Vercel says to contact its support team.
Is my project allowed on Hobby?
| Your project | OK on Hobby? | Why (Vercel's rule) |
|---|---|---|
| Personal portfolio or side project, no money involved | Yes | Personal, non-commercial use |
| Site with a Stripe checkout, subscriptions or any payment | No | Requesting or processing payment from visitors |
| Landing page for your SaaS, product or service | No | Advertising the sale of a product or service |
| Blog or tool with Google AdSense or other ads | No | Includes advertisements |
| Site you built for a paying client | No | Receiving payment to create, update or host the site |
| Tool you built as a paid employee or contractor | No | Financial gain of a paid employee or consultant writing the code |
| Review site whose main purpose is affiliate links | No | Affiliate linking is the primary purpose |
| Open project with a donation link (e.g. Buy Me a Coffee) | Yes | Asking for donations isn't commercial use |
What the free Hobby plan includes
| Resource | Hobby |
|---|---|
| Fast Data Transfer | 100 GB / month |
| CDN requests | 1,000,000 / month |
| Function invocations | 1,000,000 / month |
| Active CPU | 4 CPU-hours / month |
| Provisioned memory | 360 GB-hours / month |
| Image transformations | 5,000 / month |
| Projects | 200 |
| Deployments per day | 100 |
| Domains per project | 50 |
| Function maximum duration | 300 s (5 minutes) |
| Runtime logs | 1 hour |
Hobby has no billing cycle and you can't buy more usage. Vercel says that in most cases, if you exceed a Hobby limit, you have to wait until 30 days have passed before you can use that feature again.
What does Pro cost?
Pro is $20/month per developer seat and includes $20 of usage credit; viewer seats are free. Usage beyond the credit is billed at on-demand rates (for example $0.60 per million function invocations). Prices are in USD and exclude tax. Vercel offers a Pro trial, and paid Pro teams get one free first-year domain on an eligible TLD (not during the trial).
Built with v0? The same rules apply
v0's Publish button deploys to your own Vercel account, so a v0 app on a Hobby account falls under the Hobby rules above. If the app takes payments or shows ads, upgrade to Pro or export the code and deploy it somewhere else.
Free tiers elsewhere: what we could verify
Before moving to save $20/month, check the other host's rules too. This is what each host's official pages told us about commercial use on its free tier. “Unverified” means we found no official statement either way, so read that host's terms before launching a paid product.
| Host | Free tier | Commercial use on free tier | Paid from |
|---|---|---|---|
| Vercel | Free tier Hobby: $0 — 100 GB data transfer, 1M CDN requests, 1M function invocations / month | No | $20/mo |
| Netlify | Free tier Free: $0 forever — 300 credits/month | Unverified | $9/mo |
| Cloudflare Pages | Free tier Free: unlimited sites, seats, requests and bandwidth for static assets | Unverified | $5/mo |
| Railway | Limited free Free Trial: $5 one-time credit for 30 days; then Free plan with $1/month of usage | Unverified | $5/mo |
| Render | Free tier Hobby workspace $0: free static sites + free 512 MB web service that sleeps after 15 min idle | Unverified | $7/mo |
| Fly.io | Trial only No free tier — free trial of 2 VM hours or 7 days, whichever comes first | n/a | ≈$2.19/mo |
| DigitalOcean App Platform | Free tier Free: 3 static-site apps, 1 GiB outbound transfer per app per month | Unverified | $5/mo |
| Hostinger | No free tier No free tier — prepaid plans with a 30-day money-back guarantee | n/a | $2.99/mo |
Common questions
Can I run Google AdSense on Vercel Hobby?
No. Vercel lists the inclusion of advertisements, including Google AdSense, as commercial usage, which requires Pro or Enterprise.
Can I take payments with Stripe on a Hobby project?
No. Any method of requesting or processing payment from visitors counts as commercial usage.
Can I accept donations on Vercel Hobby?
Yes. Vercel says asking for donations does not fall under commercial usage.
Can I host a client's website on my Hobby account?
No. Receiving payment to create, update or host a site is commercial usage, and so is code written by a paid employee or consultant.
What happens if I go over the Hobby limits?
Hobby can't buy extra usage. Vercel says that in most cases you have to wait until 30 days have passed before you can use the feature again.
How much is Vercel Pro?
$20/month per developer seat (USD, excluding tax), including $20 of usage credit. Viewer seats are free.