“Dormant deployments were quietly consuming storage”: Why Vercel tightened its free-tier rules

Vercel recently announced changes to its free Hobby plan that will automatically delete old, unprotected deployments if they exceed the 10GB Deployment Storage limit. According to Jas Garcha, Vercel's head of pricing, this change aims to keep the free tier viable as deployment volumes have grown significantly. Previously, teams on the free tier could keep eligible deployments for up to 30 days, but that window has been eliminated for teams exceeding the 10GB limit.

Now, if users go over the standard 10GB limit, old deployments not covered by Vercel's exceptions will be deleted immediately. Hobby projects will still retain the three most recent production deployments and three most recent deployments of any type, regardless of age. Preview deployments will also lose their separate protection.

Vercel's policy update aims to free up storage for active projects as deployment rates have increased sixfold year-over-year. The deleted deployments remain in a 30-day recovery period, and users can restore them from their project settings. Users can choose to move to the Pro tier, where storage beyond the plan's allowance is billed at $0.10 per GB-month, or optimize their Deployment Storage usage to stay within the free 10GB limit.