Vercel’s free Hobby plan prohibits commercial use. Running a paying-customer app on it violates terms of service and can result in suspension.
By Contributor · published 5/30/2026
In plain English
Protect your business from sudden shutdowns by upgrading to a paid plan if your app has customers or earns money. Using the free version for commercial work violates the rules and risks your site being taken offline without warning.
Vercel’s Hobby plan is documented as “aimed at developers with personal projects, and small-scale applications.” The [Vercel fair use guidelines](https://vercel.com/docs/plans/hobby) explicitly state: “The Hobby plan restricts users to non-commercial, personal use only.”
This catches many first-time builders who deploy on the free plan, get early customers, and don’t realize they’re violating terms of service. A suspended deployment can take a customer-facing app offline with no warning.
**The practical threshold:**
- Personal project, internal tool, or no-revenue prototype → Hobby plan is fine
- Any app with paying customers, or any app you are monetizing → upgrade to Vercel Pro ($20/month per team)
Additionally, the Hobby plan enforces lower compute limits. If you exceed your usage, the service pauses until the 30-day cycle resets — not just rate-limits, but stops.
## Why it matters
For business owners, an unexpected platform suspension is an operational and reputational crisis. The $20/month Pro plan is not a luxury — it is the baseline for any commercial deployment on Vercel.
## Suggested next action
If you have paying customers or are generating revenue from a Vercel-deployed app, upgrade your team to the Pro plan today.
