On September 8, 2026, web development platform Vercel announced the general availability (GA) of Flat Rate CDN for Pro teams, transitioning content delivery network pricing from pay-as-you-go metering to a predictable monthly rate to eliminate surprise billing risks.
Team-Level Resource Allocation
According to Vercel, the Flat Rate CDN model calculates resource consumption across an entire team rather than per individual project. The baseline Pro plan includes 1 million requests and 1 TB of data transfer. This fixed rate encompasses four primary resource categories:
- CDN requests - Fast Data Transfer - Blob storage data transfer - Observability log events generated by CDN requests
Built-In Spike Protection
A key highlight of the new pricing structure is default spike protection. When traffic surges due to viral launches or automated crawler activity, Vercel's infrastructure automatically absorbs the additional volume without dropping connections, throttling performance, or levying surprise overage fees, provided usage remains within fair use guidelines. Vercel cited an example of a team on a $20/month CDN tier experiencing a viral spike that would have previously incurred tens of thousands of dollars in overages, while their actual bill remained locked at $20.
Vercel noted that all traffic continues to route across its private fiber backbone, offering performance improvements of up to 60% over standard public routing. Pricing tiers automatically adjust based on sustained monthly consumption rather than short-lived, transient spikes.
Availability
Flat Rate CDN is enabled by default for all newly registered Pro teams. Existing Pro teams can migrate to the new billing model via the Billing settings tab inside the Vercel dashboard.