TL;DR
- Vercel Analytics is a convenient starting point for Vercel-hosted projects, especially when you only need simple traffic analytics.
- The Hobby plan includes a capped monthly Web Analytics allowance. If your site grows beyond that allowance, you may need to upgrade or move to another analytics setup.
- Speed Insights is separate from Web Analytics and has its own data-point limits and pricing model.
- Raah is a strong Vercel Analytics alternative when you want traffic analytics, Core Web Vitals, network performance, third-party script monitoring, frontend errors, and user journeys in one dashboard.
- You do not need to move your app away from Vercel to use Raah. Add one lightweight beacon and keep your existing hosting workflow.
Vercel Analytics is one of the easiest ways to add traffic analytics to a Vercel-hosted site. If you already deploy with Vercel, the setup is simple, the dashboard is clean, and the data is useful enough for many early projects.
But the free tier has limits.
On the Hobby plan, Vercel Analytics includes a capped amount of monthly Web Analytics events. Once your site grows beyond that allowance, tracking can stop until the next billing cycle unless you upgrade. Vercel also prices additional Web Analytics events on paid plans, and Speed Insights has its own separate usage model.
That is fine for some teams. But if you want predictable analytics, privacy-friendly tracking, Web Vitals, network performance, and user behavior insights in one place, you may want a Vercel Analytics alternative.
That is where Raah fits.
Why people look for a Vercel Analytics alternative
Most people do not start looking for an alternative because Vercel Analytics is hard to use. They start looking because their needs change.
Common reasons include:
- Your site is growing beyond the Hobby analytics allowance.
- You do not want analytics tied to your hosting provider.
- You want traffic analytics and performance monitoring in one dashboard.
- You need deeper frontend observability than pageviews alone.
- You want cookie-free analytics without consent banner complexity.
- You want to monitor Core Web Vitals, API calls, third-party scripts, and user journeys together.
- You deploy across Vercel, Netlify, Cloudflare, custom servers, or multiple platforms.
Vercel Analytics is convenient if your whole world lives inside Vercel. Raah is built for teams that want analytics to follow the product, not the hosting provider.
Vercel Analytics free tier: what to know
Vercel's Hobby plan includes a free Web Analytics allowance, but it is capped. Vercel's public pricing also lists paid Web Analytics usage at a per-event rate on paid plans.
Speed Insights is separate from Web Analytics. On the Hobby plan, Vercel provides a free Speed Insights allowance for one project, with its own data-point limits.
That means your actual analytics setup may involve more than one usage bucket:
- Web Analytics events
- Speed Insights data points
- Add-ons if you are on a paid plan
- Usage-based pricing as traffic grows
For small personal projects, this may be enough. For a growing product, SaaS app, content site, or startup landing page, those limits can become part of your analytics decision.
For the exact current numbers, always check the official Vercel pricing page and Speed Insights limits and pricing documentation.
What to use instead: Raah
Raah is a privacy-first website analytics and frontend observability platform for developers.
You add one lightweight script to your site, and Raah gives you:
- Pageviews and visitor analytics
- Referrers and UTM campaign tracking
- Device, browser, country, and city breakdowns
- Core Web Vitals monitoring
- Network request performance
- API and endpoint timing
- Third-party script performance
- User journey visibility
- Frontend error tracking
- Performance alerts
- Cookie-free tracking without fingerprinting
Raah is built for teams that want to understand both traffic and user experience.
Traditional analytics tools tell you what pages people visit. Raah also helps you understand whether those pages are fast, which APIs are slow, which third-party scripts are hurting performance, and where users are coming from.
Vercel Analytics vs Raah
| Feature | Vercel Analytics | Raah |
|---|---|---|
| Basic pageview analytics | Yes | Yes |
| Works outside Vercel | Limited by setup and use case | Yes |
| Cookie-free analytics | Yes | Yes |
| Core Web Vitals | Via Speed Insights | Yes |
| Network request monitoring | Limited | Yes |
| API performance from the browser | Limited | Yes |
| Third-party script performance | Limited | Yes |
| User journey insights | Limited | Yes |
| Privacy-friendly by default | Yes | Yes |
| Hosting-provider independent | No | Yes |
Vercel Analytics is a good fit if you want simple analytics for a Vercel project.
Raah is a better fit if you want a fuller picture of what users experience after they land on your site.
When should you switch from Vercel Analytics?
You should consider switching when analytics becomes part of how you run the product, not just something you occasionally check.
For example, switch when you want to answer questions like:
- Which marketing campaigns are bringing users who actually engage?
- Which pages are slow for real users?
- Are API calls slowing down the user journey?
- Which third-party scripts are hurting load time?
- Where are users dropping off?
- Are performance issues happening for specific countries, browsers, or networks?
- Can I monitor analytics and frontend reliability in one dashboard?
If you only need a simple pageview counter, Vercel Analytics may be enough.
If you need traffic analytics plus real-user performance monitoring, Raah gives you a broader view.
How to add Raah to a Vercel site
You do not need to move your app away from Vercel to use Raah.
Raah works with Vercel-hosted sites, Next.js apps, React apps, Astro sites, Vue apps, Nuxt apps, SvelteKit apps, and other frontend frameworks.
The setup is usually one script tag:
<script
defer
src="https://t.raah.dev/script.js"
data-pid="YOUR_PROJECT_ID"
data-domain="YOUR_DOMAIN"
></script>
After deployment, open your Raah dashboard and visit your site. Data usually starts appearing within a few minutes.
If you use Next.js, you can also follow the framework-specific setup in the Raah beacon installation guide.
Why Raah is a strong Vercel Analytics alternative
The biggest reason to use Raah is that it combines analytics and frontend observability.
You do not just see that a page received traffic. You can see whether the experience was good.
That matters because traffic without performance context can be misleading. A campaign may bring users, but if the landing page has poor LCP, slow API calls, or a blocking third-party script, those users may leave before converting.
Raah helps you connect those dots:
- Acquisition: Where users came from.
- Behavior: What pages and journeys they followed.
- Experience: How fast the site felt.
- Reliability: Which requests, scripts, or errors affected the session.
That makes Raah useful not only for marketers, but also for founders, developers, and product teams.
Final verdict
Vercel Analytics is a convenient starting point for Vercel projects. The free Hobby allowance is useful for small sites, but growing products often need more flexibility, deeper visibility, and analytics that are not tied to one hosting platform.
If you are looking for a Vercel Analytics alternative that gives you privacy-friendly web analytics, Core Web Vitals, network performance, third-party script monitoring, and user journey insights in one dashboard, Raah is built for that.
You can keep hosting on Vercel.
Just use Raah to understand what your users are actually experiencing.
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