Compare / Vercel vs AWS Lightsail

Vercel vs AWS Lightsail

Pre-calculated from hand-checked data — Vercel checked 2026-08-07, AWS Lightsail checked 2026-08-06.

The short version

Vercel and AWS Lightsail split our comparison — the right pick depends on what your project values.

Price AWS Lightsail

AWS Lightsail is cheaper at most of the stages we model.

Ease Vercel

Vercel is easier to get running: connect the Git repo; every push builds and deploys with a preview URL per branch.

Control AWS Lightsail

AWS Lightsail gives you more control over the stack — the flip side of the convenience trade.

Features Vercel

Vercel comes out ahead on 7 of the 15 features we track, versus 3.

What developers say about this matchup

We couldn't find a substantive first-person discussion comparing this exact pair. We leave the section empty instead of filling it with vendor marketing or generic SEO comparisons.

At a glance

Vercel AWS Lightsail
Best for Next.js and frontend apps where you want deploys and previews to just work. Projects that want predictable AWS — a fixed-price server with a clear upgrade path into the wider AWS ecosystem.
How deploys work Connect the Git repo; every push builds and deploys with a preview URL per branch. Pick a blueprint (WordPress, LAMP, Node.js, plain Linux), get SSH in the browser or your terminal, and manage it like any VPS.
The tradeoff Usage pricing past the credit can climb fast with real traffic, especially data transfer. Costs more per spec than the European VPS crowd, and stopped instances keep billing.
Free tier Hobby: free for personal, non-commercial projects — 100 GB data transfer, 1M function invocations, and 4 active CPU hours per month. 90-day free trial (750 hours/month) on the $5–$12 Linux bundles and the $15 database, plus $100–$200 in new-account AWS credits.

What you'd realistically pay

Free $5 $20 $12 $40 $39 Just starting Steady traffic Growing
Vercel AWS Lightsail
Estimated monthly cost at each project stage. Estimates use each provider's real plans; euro prices are compared at a rough exchange rate.
Project stage Vercel AWS Lightsail Cheaper
Just starting Free Hobby — Personal projects only; commercial use requires Pro at $20/month. ≈$5/mo Nano — 2 vCPU, 512 MB RAM, 20 GB SSD, 1 TB transfer. $3.50 as IPv6-only. Free for the first 90 days. Vercel
Steady traffic ≈$20/mo Pro — Includes $20/month of usage credit, which covers modest traffic. ≈$12/mo Small — 2 vCPU, 2 GB RAM, 60 GB SSD, 3 TB transfer. AWS Lightsail
Growing ≈$40/mo Pro + usage — The $20 fee plus typical usage overages; heavy traffic or extra seats push it higher. ≈$39/mo Medium + managed database — $24 Medium (4 GB RAM, 4 TB transfer) plus the $15 managed MySQL/PostgreSQL bundle. ≈ Tie

Vercel pricing notes

  • Hobby has no paid overage — features pause when an allowance runs out.
  • Databases come from partners (Neon, Supabase, and others) and bill separately.

AWS Lightsail pricing notes

  • Billed hourly up to the monthly cap — partial months cost less, but stopped instances still bill.
  • IPv6-only bundles are 20–30% cheaper; an unattached static IPv4 costs ~$3.60/month.
  • Bundles scale up to 64 vCPU / 256 GB RAM ($1,764/month), with compute- and memory-optimized variants.

Our ratings

Ease of use Vercel

Vercel 5/5
AWS Lightsail 3/5

Pricing clarity AWS Lightsail

Vercel 2/5
AWS Lightsail 4/5

Free tier

Vercel 3/5
AWS Lightsail 3/5

Scaling Vercel

Vercel 5/5
AWS Lightsail 3/5

Control AWS Lightsail

Vercel 2/5
AWS Lightsail 5/5

Feature by feature

Vercel wins 7, AWS Lightsail wins 3, with 5 even.

Deploy workflow

Vercel AWS Lightsail
Deploy from Git push Yes Connect GitHub, GitLab, or Bitbucket; every push deploys. No No deploy pipeline — bring your own CI or scripts.
Preview deploys Yes Automatic preview URL for every branch and pull request. No Nothing built in.
Official CLI Yes The vercel CLI deploys, manages env vars, and streams logs. Yes The AWS CLI covers Lightsail end to end.
Instant rollbacks Yes Instant rollback to any previous deployment from the dashboard. Partial Snapshots restore machines ($0.05/GB-month); no deploy-level rollback.

Platform

Vercel AWS Lightsail
Custom domains + HTTPS Yes Unlimited domains with automatic TLS on all plans. Yes Lightsail DNS zones are included; TLS is yours via certbot or a Lightsail distribution.
Built-in CDN / edge network Yes Global edge network serves static assets and caches responses. Yes Lightsail distributions add a CloudFront-backed CDN from $2.50/month (first year of 50 GB/month free).
Serverless functions Yes Serverless and edge functions are the core compute model. No Not in Lightsail — that is the wider AWS (Lambda), with the à la carte billing this product avoids.
Docker containers No No container deploys — code must fit the serverless build. Yes Install Docker on any instance, or use the Lightsail container service from $7/month.
SSH / shell access No No shell; debugging happens through logs and tracing. Yes Full root SSH, including a browser-based terminal.
EU hosting region Yes Function region is selectable, including EU locations. Yes Frankfurt, Ireland, London, Paris, Stockholm, and Spain.

Runtime & operations

Vercel AWS Lightsail
Automatic scaling Yes Serverless scales per request with no configuration. No No autoscaling — resize by restoring a snapshot to a bigger bundle.
Scale to zero Yes Functions cost nothing while idle by design. No Stopped instances bill at full rate; only deletion stops charges.
Scheduled jobs Yes Cron jobs trigger functions; Hobby is limited to 2 daily crons. Yes Classic cron on the box.
Managed database Partial No own database — the marketplace resells Neon, Supabase, Upstash, and others. Yes Managed MySQL/PostgreSQL bundles from $15/month.
Logs & metrics built in Yes Runtime logs and Web Analytics built in; deeper observability is a paid add-on. Partial Instance metrics and alarms in the console; deeper monitoring means CloudWatch or your own stack.

Watch out for

Vercel

  • The free Hobby plan does not allow commercial projects.
  • Pro usage beyond the included $20 monthly credit bills on demand: edge requests from $2 per million, fast data transfer from $0.15/GB after the first 1 TB.
  • Every additional team member who deploys costs $20/month.

AWS Lightsail

  • Stopped instances bill at the full rate — only deleting an instance (snapshot first, $0.05/GB-month) stops charges.
  • Transfer overage costs $0.09/GB in US/EU regions, and some regions (Mumbai, Sydney, São Paulo…) include only half the listed allowance.
  • The new-account AWS Free plan expires after 6 months or when credits run out, then the account auto-closes with a 90-day grace period.
  • Outgrowing Lightsail means migrating to EC2 — a real project, not a plan toggle.

Read the full reviews: Vercel and AWS Lightsail. Or answer four questions to see what fits your project.