Your own server, or Vercel?
An app with a database and workers on a server you own with OpsCrew, against Vercel (opens in a new tab). Vercel’s facts checked on its own pages on 6 November 2026.
The short answer
Vercel is the better choice when
- Your app is mostly a Next.js (opens in a new tab) front end: Next.js is maintained by Vercel, and Vercel’s network caches pages in every region
- Your project is personal and non-commercial, and fits the free Hobby plan
- Your traffic is small or comes in bursts, and you would rather pay for use than for a server sitting idle
- You want a preview of every deployment, with comments and sign-in protection built in
- You never want to think about a server
Your own server with OpsCrew is the better choice when
- Your project is commercial and small: Hobby is for personal, non-commercial use only, and Pro starts at $20 a month
- Your app needs a database: on your server it runs beside the app at no extra cost; on Vercel it comes from a Marketplace provider
- You run workers or long jobs: on your server they are containers that run as long as they need
- You want a monthly server price that you saw before you approved it
- You want the whole setup as files in your repository that you can take elsewhere
OpsCrew is alpha software. It is tested live on Hetzner Cloud (opens in a new tab), Contabo (opens in a new tab), a server you already own and an existing Portainer (opens in a new tab); expect breaking changes before 1.0.
Side by side
| Topic | Your own server, with OpsCrew | Vercel |
|---|---|---|
| Going over | Your app is not paused for using its server. The scheduled check opens an issue when the app is down or its disk fills up, and advise proposes a bigger server for you to approve. | On Hobby, in most cases you wait until 30 days have passed before you can use that feature again. On Pro, usage past the credit is billed; Vercel tells you at 75% of the credit, and its spend notifications start at $200 by default. |
| Database | PostgreSQL (opens in a new tab), MySQL (opens in a new tab), MariaDB (opens in a new tab), MongoDB (opens in a new tab) or SQLite (opens in a new tab) on your server, beside the app, or the hosted database you already use. | Vercel’s own storage is Blob for files and Global Config for settings. Databases come through the Vercel Marketplace, from providers such as Neon (opens in a new tab), Upstash (opens in a new tab) and Supabase (opens in a new tab). |
| Background work | Workers and cron jobs from your app’s own image, as containers on the server. | Functions run up to 300 seconds on Hobby and by default on Pro, where they can be set to 800. For longer work Vercel offers Daemons and Queues. |
| Next.js | Deploys it too: OpsCrew makes the changes Next.js needs itself (standalone output and a health route). | Next.js is maintained by Vercel. |
| Previews | A copy of the app for each pull request, at its own address, on a small server of its own. | Preview deployments, with comments and Vercel Authentication to protect them. |
| Logs | opscrew logs shows the app’s lines from the server, and opscrew status what runs with its CPU, memory and disk. | Runtime logs: 1 hour on Hobby, 1 day on Pro. |
| Leaving later | Plain files in your repository. Delete OpsCrew and the deployment keeps working. | Your code moves. Vercel’s own services, such as Blob and Global Config, are what you replace elsewhere. |
What it costs
Vercel’s plans as its own pages describe them on 6 November 2026, in US dollars, excluding taxes. Hetzner’s prices in euros, excluding VAT, as OpsCrew read them on 3 November 2026.
Vercel Hobby, free
- Personal, non-commercial use only
- 200 projects and 100 deployments a day
- Included each month: 100 GB of Fast Data Transfer, 1,000,000 CDN requests and 1,000,000 function invocations
- 4 CPU-hours of active CPU and 360 GB-hours of provisioned memory
Vercel Pro, $20 a month
- One deploying seat and a $20 usage credit that expires each month
- Further deploying seats $20 a month each; viewer seats free
- 1,000,000 CDN requests and 1 TB of data transfer a month included
- Add-ons such as password protection at $20 a month per project
Your own server, with OpsCrew
- OpsCrew: free
- A small Hetzner server from about €6 a month, excl. VAT
- The test app’s Next.js site and PostgreSQL on one server with backups: €10.69 a month
- Workers, cron jobs and a cache on the same server at no extra cost until it is full
A site with no server side at all has a third way: OpsCrew can host it on Cloudflare (opens in a new tab), free for static files, or on GitHub Pages (opens in a new tab) for a public repository.
Sources, checked on 6 November 2026
- Vercel pricing (opens in a new tab)
- Vercel’s Hobby plan (opens in a new tab)
- Vercel’s Pro plan (opens in a new tab)
- Vercel storage (opens in a new tab)
- Vercel Daemons (opens in a new tab)
- Next.js (opens in a new tab)
- Hetzner’s prices as OpsCrew read them on 3 November 2026, from Hetzner Cloud (opens in a new tab)
Put your Next.js app on a server you own.
Run npx opscrew init in your app’s repository. Nothing is created until you approve a plan and its monthly cost.