Vercel now bills Deployment Storage at $0.10 per GB-month, and the default keeps production a year

Summary. On 21 August 2026 Vercel added Deployment Storage to its changelog as a metered resource: "Deployment Storage is now measured and billed at $0.10 per GB per month for new Pro and Enterprise teams." The documentation shows two meters, not one. Deployment Storage covers build outputs and static assets at $0.10 per GB-month, and Functions Storage covers Vercel Function bundles at $0.10 per GB-month, counted in every region where Vercel deploys them. The amount you store is set by your Deployment Retention Policy, and on Pro and Enterprise the untouched default keeps production deployments for 1 year, pre-production for 180 days and errored builds for 90 days. Most teams have never opened that settings page.

What Vercel changed and what it covers

Vercel measures both metrics in GB-months. The pricing section of the Deployment Storage documentation defines the unit precisely: Vercel records the maximum stored amount for each project on each billing day, then adds those daily project amounts across the billing period. Storing 1 GB every day in a 30-day month equals 1 GB-month. That is a daily-peak measure, not an average, so a single large deployment on one day counts fully for that day.

The two meters catch different artifacts.

Meter or control	What it covers	Pro list value
Deployment Storage	Build outputs and static assets	$0.10 per GB-month
Functions Storage	Vercel Function bundles, stored in each region where Vercel deploys them	$0.10 per GB-month
Production retention	How long a replaced production deployment is kept	1 year by default
Pre-Production retention	How long preview deployments are kept	180 days by default
Errored retention	How long failed builds are kept	90 days by default
Canceled retention	How long canceled builds are kept	30 days by default
Remote Cache Artifacts	Task output later builds reuse	Separate product, separate usage
Vercel Blob	Files your application uploads and manages	Separate product, separate usage

The Functions Storage line is the one to read twice. Vercel stores function bundles in each region where it deploys them, so a project running functions in several regions multiplies the stored bytes by the region count before the $0.10 rate applies. Deployment Storage and Functions Storage move independently: the documentation notes a project can have low Deployment Storage and high Functions Storage, or the reverse.

The retention defaults are now a price list

Retention was previously a security and compliance control. It is now the main input to a bill. The default periods, which apply unless a team or project sets a custom policy:

Deployment state	Pro and Enterprise default	Hobby default
Canceled	30 days	30 days
Errored	90 days	30 days
Pre-Production	180 days	30 days
Production	1 year	30 days

A Pro team that ships to production twice a day and never changed these settings is holding roughly 730 production deployments' worth of build output and function bundles at any moment, plus six months of preview deployments from every open pull request. None of that was billable before 21 August 2026. All of it is measurable now.

The deletion path has its own lag. After a deployment reaches its configured retention limit, a background job typically marks it for deletion within 48 hours. Vercel's own worked example describes a production deployment created on 01/01/2024 with a 60-day retention period expiring on 03/01/2024, at which point requests return a 410 status code, with restoration still possible until 03/31/2024, when the resources are permanently removed. Shortening a policy therefore does not shorten your bill today. It starts a clock.

The setting that changes everything, and the checkbox that does not

Vercel documents two scopes. The team policy under Team Settings, Security and Privacy, Deployment Retention Policy sets the default for new projects. A project policy under the project's Settings, Security replaces the team default for that project only.

The trap sits in step 5 of Vercel's own optimization guide, which tells you to clear "Apply this policy to all existing projects" unless you intend to update every existing project. Read that the other way round: if you set a shorter team policy and leave the box unticked, your existing projects keep the old, longer periods and keep billing. The teams most exposed to this change are the ones with the most existing projects, which are exactly the teams for whom the checkbox does the most damage in either direction.

The meter is missing from the pricing reference

Vercel's canonical billable-metrics page, /docs/pricing, carries a last-updated date of 29 July 2026 and lists billable resources for Vercel Functions, Image Optimization, Global Config and Web Analytics. It does not mention Deployment Storage or Functions Storage. The /docs/limits reference, last updated 3 August 2026, does not mention them either. The only page carrying the $0.10 rate is /docs/deployment-storage.

Vercel page	Last updated	Mentions Deployment Storage billing
/docs/deployment-storage	2018-10-20 in page metadata	Yes, $0.10 per GB-month for both meters
/docs/pricing	2026-07-29	No
/docs/limits	2026-08-03	No
/changelog, 21 August 2026 entry	2026-08-21	Yes, "$0.10 per GB per month for new Pro and Enterprise teams"

The metadata date on the page that carries the new price reads 2018-10-20, which is plainly not when the pricing table was written. Treat the changelog entry as the dated source and the documentation as the detail, not the other way round.

There is also a scope question the two sources answer differently. The changelog scopes the change to "new Pro and Enterprise teams." The documentation states a flat "Pro list price" with no distinction between new and existing teams, and adds that Enterprise rates follow your contract and that your plan or contract may include an allowance. If you are on an existing Pro team, neither source tells you the date you start paying. The documentation's instruction is to confirm your team's allowance, rate and charge from the Usage view and your invoice. That is the only answer available today, and it is worth doing this week rather than at the next invoice.

What to do, in order

Open Usage for the team, select Deployment Storage, set the range to the last 30 days, and record the team total for both Deployment Storage and Functions Storage. Then select Projects and record the highest projects for each metric separately, because the two rankings will not match.

Next, set retention from how the team actually uses each deployment state rather than from the default. Vercel's guidance maps pre-production to code review, quality assurance, external approvals and regression investigation; production to incident recovery, rollback and release audits; and canceled and errored to build debugging. Very few teams need a year of production deployments to satisfy incident recovery, and the ones that do usually need it for audit rather than rollback.

Then reduce output size, which is where the second meter lives. Function bundle size multiplied by region count is the whole Functions Storage bill, so a team that deploys functions to several regions gets the largest reduction from trimming bundles rather than from trimming history. Build output is the other half, and teams already tracking Turbopack persistent build caching in CI have the measurement in place to see the effect. Vercel is explicit that Deployment Storage is separate from Remote Cache Artifacts, so cache work and storage work do not substitute for each other.

For teams comparing platforms on total cost, this adds a line that did not previously exist to any Vercel model, alongside the metered observability events covered in Vercel custom metrics billing, and it changes the arithmetic in a Cloudflare Workers against Vercel Functions cost comparison. Teams that already run self-hosted Next.js without the Vercel adapter are unaffected, and now have one more number for the build-versus-buy sheet.

India-specific considerations

At roughly ₹88 to the dollar in August 2026, 100 GB-months across both meters is about ₹880 per month, which is small on its own and easy to leave unexamined for a year. The number that matters for Indian teams is the multiplier: a team with 40 active projects, long-lived preview deployments and multi-region functions can reach several hundred GB-months without any single project looking unusual in the dashboard.

Retention is also a data-protection control. A preview deployment held for 180 days may contain build output derived from personal data, and under the Digital Personal Data Protection Act 2023 the retention period for that data is a decision you should be able to justify. Setting retention deliberately answers a cost question and a governance question with the same change. Broader tactics sit in our note on cloud cost optimization for Indian companies.

What is still unknown

Vercel has not published a date on which existing Pro teams begin paying, has not published the included allowance for Pro, and has not added either meter to the pricing or limits references. Until those appear, the Usage view and the invoice are the only authoritative numbers for a given team.

FAQ

How much does Vercel charge for Deployment Storage?

Vercel lists $0.10 per GB-month for Deployment Storage and $0.10 per GB-month for Functions Storage at Pro list price. The 21 August 2026 changelog entry describes the same rate as $0.10 per GB per month. Enterprise rates follow your contract, and your plan may include an allowance.

What is a GB-month on Vercel?

Vercel records the maximum stored amount for each project on each billing day, then adds those daily project amounts across the billing period. Storing 1 GB every day in a 30-day month equals one GB-month. Because the measure uses a daily maximum rather than an average, a single large day counts fully.

What are Vercel's default deployment retention periods?

On Pro and Enterprise, the defaults are 30 days for canceled deployments, 90 days for errored, 180 days for pre-production and 1 year for production. On Hobby, all four states default to 30 days. These apply unless a team policy or a project policy replaces them.

Does shortening my retention policy lower this month's bill?

Not immediately. After a deployment reaches its retention limit, a background job typically marks it for deletion within 48 hours, and Vercel's documented example shows a further recovery window before resources are permanently removed. Shortening retention starts the clock on stored output rather than removing it on the day you save.

What is the difference between Deployment Storage and Functions Storage?

Deployment Storage covers build outputs and static assets. Functions Storage covers Vercel Function bundles, and Vercel stores those bundles in each region where it deploys them. Both bill at $0.10 per GB-month. Vercel notes a project can show low Deployment Storage and high Functions Storage, or the reverse.

Does the team retention policy apply to my existing projects?

Only if you choose it. Vercel's guidance says to clear "Apply this policy to all existing projects" unless you intend to update every existing project. Left unticked, a new team policy applies to new projects and existing projects keep their current, usually longer, retention periods and keep storing output.

Is Deployment Storage the same as Vercel Blob or Remote Cache?

No. Vercel documents three separate products: Deployment Storage holds output linked to retained deployments, Remote Cache Artifacts hold task output that later builds reuse, and Vercel Blob holds files your application uploads and manages. A change in one does not always change usage in another.

How eCorpIT can help

Our DevOps services team treats retention policy as a costed configuration rather than a checkbox: usage read per project across both meters, retention periods set from actual review, rollback and audit needs, and function bundle size reduced before history is cut. eCorpIT is CMMI Level 5 and ISO 27001:2022 certified and designs deployment retention aligned with Digital Personal Data Protection Act 2023 requirements. Send us your Vercel Usage export at contact-us and we will size the change before your next invoice.

References

1. Vercel Changelog — "Deployment Storage keeps your deployments rollback-ready", 21 August 2026.
2. Deployment Storage keeps your deployments rollback-ready — the changelog entry for the metered resource.
3. Deployment Storage — the two metrics, the GB-month definition and the $0.10 Pro list price.
4. Deployment Retention — default retention periods by plan, the 410 behaviour and the recovery window.
5. Optimize Deployment Storage — team and project policy steps and the usage review procedure.
6. Pricing on Vercel — the billable-metrics reference, last updated 29 July 2026.
7. Limits — account limits and resource constraints reference, last updated 3 August 2026.
8. Vercel Pro Plan — credit-based billing and plan scope.
9. Vercel Functions usage and pricing — Active CPU, Provisioned Memory and Invocations metrics referenced by the pricing page.
10. Image Optimization limits and pricing — an example of a resource that does appear in the pricing reference.
11. Managing Deployments — redeploying and promoting retained deployments.
12. Instant Rollback — the rollback path that retained production deployments exist to support.

Last updated: 22 August 2026.