dropto.run vs Vercel
Vercel's free plan is for personal projects only. A static folder should not need permission.
Hobby is non-commercial
Their fair-use guidelines restrict the free plan to non-commercial, personal use. A client's site on it is the wrong plan, whatever it costs to serve.
Pro is priced per seat
$20 a month for the first seat and $20 for each one after, with function and image usage billed on top. For a folder of static files that is a lot of platform to carry.
Nothing here competes with Next.js
Server rendering, ISR, middleware and image optimisation are theirs. If your site needs any of it, this page is not for you.
When Vercel is the better choice
- ·You are shipping a Next.js app. Server rendering, incremental regeneration, middleware, image optimisation — it is their framework and their platform, and nothing static replaces it.
- ·You need functions beside the site. One deploy carrying both the pages and the code behind them is genuinely simpler than hosting them in two places. A site here can call an API you run elsewhere, with its key kept off the page, but that code still runs somewhere else.
- ·The team is big enough to need roles. Access roles, log drains, spend management and a configurable firewall are built for organisations, and none of that exists here.
- ·Preview deployments on every commit. Tied to the repository and to review, which is a workflow, not a feature — and one this service does not have.
Line by line
Their figures were read from their own pages on 15 September 2026. Ours are the ceilings the server enforces, which is why the rows that would be numbers here point at the plans instead of repeating them.
| dropto.run | Vercel | |
|---|---|---|
| Folder or zip to a live link | Yes | Yes, via their CLI or drop |
| Commercial use on the free plan | Allowed | Not allowed — Hobby is personal use only |
| Paid plan priced per person | No | $20 a month, one seat in, $20 for each one after |
| Build runs before the site is live | No build at all | Yes |
| Server rendering and functions | None | Yes |
| Requests counted against you | Not for your pages; calls to your own API through /api/* have a monthly allowance | 1M a month on Hobby; Pro's flat-rate tier starts at 1M |
| Bandwidth counted against you | No | 100 GB a month on Hobby; Pro's flat-rate tier starts at 1 TB |
| Publishes a day | No count limit — the budget counts files | 100 on Hobby, 6,000 on Pro |
| Running out on the free plan | The limit is on publishing, not on traffic | Usage pauses, in most cases until 30 days have passed |
| A folder of Markdown served with a sidebar | Yes — no build, no theme | Through a framework you build |
| Reviewers comment on the page itself | On plans with comments: pinned on the live site, reviewers sign in to Drop2Run | On preview deployments, every plan; reviewers need a Vercel account |
| Publishing from a script or an agent | CLI, API token, MCP server | CLI, API, Git integration |
Which rows are here is our choice, which is what every comparison page does. What is in them is not: each figure above came from their pricing, the Hobby plan and its fair-use rule, comments on preview deployments and adding the toolbar to production. If one is out of date, tell us and it is corrected with the date on it.
Nothing counts your readers.
Files are served from the edge out of storage where egress costs nothing, so there is no traffic figure for your pages to pass on — and no plan here on which one appears. What is bounded is publishing, and the calls a site sends on to your own API, and those figures are read from the same table the server enforces. Every number below comes from the API at page load, not from this page. All of them, side by side →
What Vercel counts
- ✕Edge requests — 1M a month on Hobby
- ✕Data transfer — 100 GB a month on Hobby
- ✕Function time and invocations
- ✕Deployments — 100 a day on Hobby
Read 15 September 2026.
What is counted here
- ✓New or changed files, against a monthly and a daily budget. Unchanged files are reused rather than uploaded again, so publishing the same site twice costs almost nothing.
- ✓Storage, counting each file once however many versions hold it. Republishing the same files adds nothing.
- ✓Calls a site sends to your own API, against a monthly allowance. Only where a site routes
/api/*to an API of yours; a page that does not never has one counted. - ✕Never visits, bandwidth, page requests or build minutes. There is no build, and traffic to your pages is neither billed nor throttled.
2,000 files a publish, free
With an account and no card. A folder of documents meets the file count long before it meets the bytes.
50 MB a publish, free
The size of one upload. What the account holds in total, across sites and versions, is a separate ceiling.
No limit on sites, free
Each on its own subdomain. What bounds an account is its storage, not how many sites it splits that into.
$5 / month with your own domain
Starter is the cheapest tier here that carries a custom domain and its certificate. On Vercel: free, though Hobby is non-commercial only, on Hobby.
No traffic tier, at any price
There is no plan above this one that lifts a bandwidth cap, because there is no bandwidth cap to lift.
A static folder on a platform built for applications
What is hosted here is files. There is no runtime, so there is nothing to invoke, nothing to keep warm and nothing to bill by the millisecond — and no rule about what the files may be used for.
That narrows what this can host, and the narrowing is the point: the bill is a plan, the ceilings are published, and commercial use is simply allowed.
Vercel is priced as an application platform because that is what it is. Requests, function time and transfer are the real costs of running code at the edge, and charging for them is honest.
A built folder pays into that model without drawing from it — and on the free plan it also accepts a rule about who the site may be for, which is a strange thing to agree to for a page of HTML.
Looking for a Vercel alternative
Two reasons account for most of that search. One is the rule rather than the price: their guidelines put commercial use of the Hobby plan out of bounds, which makes a client site or anything with a business behind it a Pro plan, priced per seat. The other is that a folder of static files is being hosted on a platform whose whole shape is built for applications that run code, and is paying for that shape.
If the project is a Next.js application — server rendering, ISR, middleware, image optimisation — there is nothing to compare and this page will not pretend otherwise. What moves well is a built folder: a Vite or React build, a documentation site, a landing page, a folder of PDFs. If yours only became static after `next export`, it moves; if it did not, stay.
Moving over
Whatever you publish there is already a folder, and a folder is what this takes.
- 1
Run the build yourself
The same command their pipeline runs. If the project needs server rendering, stop here — this hosts the output of a build, not the running of one.
- 2
Publish the output folder
Drop it here, or publish from CI with the CLI. Routing for a single-page app is one setting rather than a configuration file.
- 3
Move the domain when you are ready
Point the DNS record here and the certificate is issued for you. The vercel.app address keeps working until you remove the project.
Questions
Can I really not use Vercel's free plan for work?
Their fair-use guidelines say the Hobby plan is for non-commercial, personal use. It is their rule and they are entitled to it — it just means a client site or anything with a business behind it belongs on Pro, and Pro is priced per seat.
My site is Next.js. Can I move it?
Only if it is fully static — `next export`, or a build with no server rendering, no ISR and no middleware. Anything that runs per request needs a platform that runs code, and this one does not.
What happens when a page gets popular?
Nothing, for your files: their traffic is not counted, billed or throttled here. Calls a site sends to your own API through /api/* are the exception and have a monthly allowance. On Hobby, going past the included usage pauses it until the 30 days are up.
Do I get preview deployments?
Every version still kept has its own preview address, so you can check one before promoting it. Previews attached to pull requests are a repository integration, and there is none here.
Try it with the folder you already have.
No account and no card to publish. Sign in and the site stops expiring.
Vercel is a trademark of its owner. This page is not affiliated with or endorsed by them, and every figure about their service was read on 15 September 2026.