Vercel vs AWS Amplify: Which Should You Choose?

Which Should You Use: Vercel vs AWS Amplify?

Figures per Vercel's official pricing docs and AWS Amplify's official pricing page. Bottom line: Amplify's usage-based pricing has no per-seat cost and a real free tier, but its Next.js support has specific gaps. Vercel costs more per seat but supports every current Next.js rendering feature out of the box.

What Is Vercel?

Vercel is the deployment platform built by the creators of Next.js. It builds and ships every new Next.js rendering feature on day one, since the same company owns both the framework and the host.

Strengths that matter for a production Next.js app:

• Full native support for on-demand ISR, Next.js streaming, and Edge Middleware
• Zero-config deploys straight from a Git push, with a preview URL per pull request
• Pro plan build cost is metered at $0.0035 per CPU-minute, scaled by the build machine's CPU count, according to Vercel's pricing docs
• Team seats cost $20/month each beyond the free Hobby tier, per Vercel's Pro plan documentation

Best use case: teams shipping a Next.js app that depends on newer rendering features (streaming, on-demand ISR, Edge Middleware) and are willing to pay per seat for that completeness.

What Is AWS Amplify?

AWS Amplify Hosting deploys and manages SSR apps inside your own AWS account, billing for build minutes, storage, and data served rather than team seats. For Next.js specifically, the modern Amplify Hosting compute provider supports versions 12 through 15.

Key facts, verified against AWS's own documentation:

• Supported Next.js features include SSR, SSG, time-based Incremental Static Regeneration, standard Middleware, image optimization, and the app directory, according to AWS's official Next.js support page
• Unsupported features include on-demand ISR, Next.js streaming, and Edge Middleware ("Edge API Routes"), per the same AWS documentation
• The AWS Free Tier includes 1,000 build minutes, 5GB of CDN storage, and 15GB of data transfer per month at no cost, according to AWS Amplify's pricing page
• Beyond the free tier, Amplify charges $0.01 per build minute, $0.023 per GB stored per month, and $0.15 per GB served

Best use case: teams already running infrastructure on AWS who want usage-based pricing with no per-seat cost, and whose Next.js app does not depend on streaming, on-demand ISR, or Edge Middleware.

What Are the Key Differences Between Vercel and AWS Amplify?

The two platforms diverge most on pricing structure and Next.js feature completeness.

• Pricing structure: Vercel charges per seat plus usage; Amplify charges purely for usage (build minutes, storage, data served) with no seat cost at all. A large team with modest traffic can come out cheaper on Amplify purely by avoiding seat fees.
• Free tier shape: Vercel's Hobby tier is metered by Edge Requests (up to 1,000,000/month), with unlimited deployments. Amplify's AWS Free Tier is metered by build minutes (1,000), storage (5GB), and data transfer (15GB), all different units that do not map directly onto Vercel's.
• Next.js feature gaps: Amplify's documented gaps (no on-demand ISR, no streaming, no Edge Middleware) mean an app built around Suspense-based streaming or revalidatePath on-demand cache invalidation will not run as designed on Amplify. This is a framework-support gap, not a pricing one, and it does not show up until you actually try to ship those features.
• Build billing model: Vercel's build cost scales by CPU-minute and machine size ($0.0035 per CPU-minute, so an 8-CPU Enhanced build costs $0.028 per wall-clock minute). Amplify bills a flat $0.01 per build minute regardless of machine size, which is simpler to predict but does not reward smaller, lighter builds the way Vercel's per-CPU model can.

Which Should You Choose For Your Project?

Choose Vercel if your Next.js app uses on-demand ISR, streaming responses, or Edge Middleware, since Amplify does not support any of the three as of AWS's current documentation.

Choose AWS Amplify if your team already runs infrastructure on AWS, wants to avoid per-seat licensing entirely, and your app's rendering needs stop at SSR, SSG, and time-based ISR.

We have also compared the Vercel vs Cloudflare Pages decision and Netlify's 2026 pricing changes for teams weighing the full hosting landscape.