We Migrated from Vercel to Cloudflare Pages. Real Cost Breakdown.
Vercel-to-Cloudflare migration posts are usually thinly-veiled marketing. This isn't, we did the actual move for one of our customer projects. Here's the unfiltered retro.
Key takeaways
- Vercel bill before migration: ~$1,400/month at the project's traffic.
- Cloudflare Pages bill after: ~$60/month for the same workload.
- Migration took ~2 weeks; not free.
- Two real friction points: image optimization and middleware. Everything else worked.
- Would we do it again at this traffic? Yes. Below 50K monthly visitors? Probably not worth the effort.
Why we moved
The bill. The project (a content-heavy marketing site with ~800K monthly visits) was racking up bandwidth and image-optimization costs on Vercel that no longer matched its strategic value.
What worked immediately
- Static Next.js routes rendered fine via Cloudflare Pages
- Cache hit rates went up (Cloudflare's edge is broader)
- Build times comparable
What broke
next/image optimization. Vercel handles this; Cloudflare Pages doesn't natively. We integrated Cloudflare Images (separate paid product, ~$5/mo per 100K images stored, $1 per 100K delivered).
Middleware. Some Next.js middleware patterns didn't translate cleanly. Most worked; a few required rewrites.
ISR. Cloudflare Pages doesn't do ISR the way Vercel does. We moved to on-demand revalidation via Workers.
The cost numbers
Before (Vercel Pro):
- Base + bandwidth + image opt: $1,400/mo
After (Cloudflare Pages + Images + Workers):
- Cloudflare Pages: $20/mo (Pro plan)
- Cloudflare Images: ~$30/mo
- Workers + KV: $10/mo
- Total: ~$60/mo
The math: $1,340/mo in savings × 12 = $16,000/year. Migration cost: 2 weeks of engineering time ($8,000 internal). Payback: ~6 months.
When the math doesn't work
Below 50K monthly visitors, Vercel's free/hobby tier is still likely free for you, and the migration friction isn't worth it.
What we recommend
Stay on Vercel if you're under 100K monthly visitors or rely heavily on Vercel-specific features. Migrate if you're spending >$500/month and your stack is mostly static + a few API routes.
FAQs
What about Netlify? Comparable to Vercel pricing; similar story.
AWS Amplify? Cheaper than Vercel but more operational overhead.
Can we self-host? Yes, but factor in your own CDN, build infra, and on-call burden.