RunR vs Vercel
RunR is an open-source (MIT) serverless platform: functions, multi-file projects and containers on Knative, on Kubernetes clusters you operate. Vercel is a hosted platform that builds and deploys web applications from git, with a preview deployment for every pull request and Vercel Functions for the server side.
Both deploy on git push and give pull requests their own preview. Vercel runs on Vercel's infrastructure and has no on-premises product (private cloud); RunR runs on your clusters.
Differences at a glance#
| RunR | Vercel | |
|---|---|---|
| Where it runs | Your Kubernetes clusters (1.30 or newer), each connected as a region (Regions) | Vercel's cloud; on Enterprise, Bring Your Own Cloud runs functions as Lambda functions in your AWS account (BYOC) |
| From git | A git remote per project, or GitHub, GitLab and Forgejo / Gitea repositories; a preview environment per pull / merge request (Git deploy) | GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket and more; a preview deployment per branch push and pull request, with framework detection (Git, build presets) |
| Code it runs | Python, Node.js, Go, PHP, PyTorch, TensorFlow and WebAssembly runtimes, runtime plugins of your own, any OCI image (Runtimes) | Node.js, Python, Bun, Go, Ruby, Rust, Wasm, Edge and container images; Bun, Go, Ruby, Rust and Container are in beta (runtimes) |
| Environments | dev, staging and production per project; promotion of the same image, with approval (Environments) | Local, Preview and Production; custom environments on Pro and Enterprise (environments) |
| Rollouts | Blue-green with a test URL; canary in steps that rolls back by itself on error rate or p95 latency (Deploy strategies) | Rolling Releases on Pro and Enterprise; Instant Rollback on every plan (Rolling Releases, Instant Rollback) |
| Events | HTTP, schedules, queues, webhooks, topics, Kafka, NATS, RabbitMQ, MQTT, Postgres CDC, S3 and IMAP (Triggers) | Cron Jobs; Vercel Queues in beta (Cron Jobs, Queues) |
| Workflows | Durable workflows built in, with Python and TypeScript SDKs (Durable workflows) | Vercel Workflows, on the open-source Workflow SDK (Workflows) |
| Untrusted code | The Sandbox API: sandboxes under gVisor or Kata on your cluster (Sandbox API) | Vercel Sandbox: Firecracker microVMs (Sandbox) |
| MCP | A built-in MCP server at /mcp and hosting for your own MCP servers (MCP) |
The Vercel MCP server, and your own MCP server with mcp-handler (Vercel MCP, deploy MCP servers) |
| Single sign-on | Google, GitHub, Microsoft, GitLab, OpenID Connect and SAML 2.0 in the open-source code (Modules) | SAML SSO on Enterprise, and on Pro as an add-on (SAML) |
| Infrastructure as code | Terraform / OpenTofu provider brf-tech/runr, the runr CLI, a GitHub Action (Terraform provider) |
Terraform provider vercel/vercel (registry) |
When to choose which#
Vercel fits when you build a web front end with a framework it supports and want git-based deployments, previews and functions without running any infrastructure.
RunR fits when the back end must run on infrastructure you operate (on premises, a private cloud, air-gapped regions), when it needs brokers such as Kafka, NATS or RabbitMQ, Postgres change data or GPUs (GPU workers), or when it runs long-lived containers next to functions. A front end on Vercel and its back end on RunR also work together: RunR projects answer HTTP on their own URLs and custom domains.
RunR documentation to read next#
- Production install and single-host install
- Git deploy and Environments and promotion
- Deploy strategies
- Triggers
- All comparisons
The statements about Vercel come from Vercel's documentation, read on 2026-11-03 and linked next to each one. Vercel is a trademark of Vercel Inc. RunR is not affiliated with or endorsed by Vercel.