Vercel vs Akamai

Vercel and Akamai are both cloud platforms that allow you to deploy, deliver, and secure web applications globally, but they represent different eras of web infrastructure.

Akamai emerged when the web was mostly static, building infrastructure to deliver images, videos, and cacheable assets at scale. Vercel was built for the dynamic and generative web, where server components stream responses, React renders on demand, and AI powers applications.

This difference shapes how each platform approaches security, deployment, and compute. Akamai provides tools that require intentional configuration for each property and behavior. Vercel provides secure-by-default infrastructure where protection and provisioning happen automatically.

This guide compares Vercel and Akamai to help you choose the right platform for your project.

• Vercel vs Akamai
  • Caching and content delivery
  • Security
  • Compute
  • Static vs dynamic
• Platform deep dive
  • Caching and CDN
  • Security
  • Compute and AI infrastructure
  • Developer experience
  • Observability
  • Pricing
• When to choose each platform
• Get started

Both platforms provide CDN, edge compute, and security, but the difference is in what they optimize for and how they approach configuration:

• Akamai was built for the static web: long-lived assets, infrequent changes, powerful tools that require intentional configuration
• Vercel was built for the dynamic web: where static or dynamic content is generated, streamed, and personalized on demand. The platform provides secure-by-default infrastructure and zero-config deployments designed for teams that want to ship fast without requiring configuration to get started.

This shapes how each platform handles caching, security, compute, and content delivery.

Both platforms cache content at edge locations globally, but they optimize for different content lifecycles. Akamai assumes content is long-lived and rarely changes, while Vercel assumes content changes frequently and needs to invalidate fast.

Akamai's caching is built for static, long-lived assets:

• Default TTL of 365 days with Vary header stripping to maximize cache hit rates
• Tiered distribution and Cloud Wrapper for origin offload
• Media prefetching and partial object caching for files over 10MB
• Cache purge via ECCU takes 30-40 minutes to propagate

Vercel's caching is built for content that changes frequently:

• ISR invalidates cached pages globally in ~300ms
• Tag-based invalidation purges related content across all cache layers
• Built-in cache shielding with stale-while-revalidate and stale-if-error
• Global Config provides sub-1ms edge reads for feature flags and configuration
• CDN with 126 PoPs in 94 cities across 51 countries

Both platforms provide DDoS protection, WAF, and bot management, but they package them differently. Akamai offers these as separate products that you configure individually in Property Manager, while Vercel ships them as an integrated stack that's active on every deployment.

Akamai's security products:

• Prolexic for DDoS protection with SIEM event delivery
• App & API Protector for WAF with per-property rule configuration
• Bot Manager Premier for behavioral bot scoring with graduated response segments and proof-of-work crypto challenges
• Content Protector for dedicated anti-scraping with ML-based risk classification
• Request Control Cloudlet for IP and geo-based access control
• Media delivery protection including token authentication, session-level encryption, and forensic watermarking

Every Vercel deployment includes WAF, DDoS mitigation, bot protection, and rate limiting, all active from the start:

• DDoS mitigation at L3, L4, and L7, with blocked traffic excluded from billing
• Custom WAF rules on all plans, OWASP managed rulesets on Enterprise
• Bot protection managed rulesets and BotID invisible CAPTCHA for browser verification and AI crawler filtering
• Rate limiting on all plans with fixed window and token bucket algorithms

Akamai and Vercel both run code at the edge, but they're designed for different workloads. Akamai's edge compute handles request manipulation, while Vercel's handles full application logic.

Akamai EdgeWorkers provides JavaScript serverless functions at the edge:

• JavaScript only (ES2015, not Node.js) with six event handlers, 1.5-6MB memory, and 4-10s timeouts depending on tier
• 8 Cloudlets provide pre-built edge logic for traffic prioritization, A/B testing, redirects, and waiting rooms
• Linode provides full IaaS including VMs from $5/month, GPU instances from $350/month, and managed Kubernetes

Vercel Fluid compute runs full application workloads:

• Node.js, Python, Go, Ruby, Rust, and Bun with up to 4GB memory and 800-second timeouts
• Active CPU pricing bills only during code execution
• Pre-warmed instances and bytecode caching reduce cold starts, auto-scaling to 100,000+ concurrent instances
• AI Gateway (35+ providers, 200+ models, automatic failovers) and AI SDK with primitives for building AI applications and agents

Akamai built its platform when the web was mostly static. The challenge was delivering images, videos, and downloads to as many people as possible, as fast as possible. Long cache TTLs, minimal origin contact, and maximizing cache hit rates made sense because content rarely changed. Akamai's Adaptive Media Delivery handles HLS/DASH streaming with manifest manipulation and segment prefetching. Visitor Prioritization Cloudlet provides waiting rooms for high-traffic events.

Vercel is the platform built for the modern web, where content is generated, streamed, and personalized on demand. A product page renders with live inventory. A dashboard streams data as it loads. An AI agent generates content unique to each user. These workloads need infrastructure that can run full application logic, not just serve cached files.

• Fluid compute with up to 4GB memory and 800-second timeouts
• Active CPU pricing that doesn't charge while waiting on databases or AI models
• AI SDK with primitives for building AI applications and agents
• AI Gateway with 35+ providers, 200+ models, and automatic failovers

Vercel solves infrastructure problems that matter for teams building full-stack applications, performance-critical systems, and AI-powered products. The platform eliminates configuration overhead while providing advanced capabilities when you need them.

Vercel operates a global CDN with 126 PoPs in 94 cities across 51 countries, with 20 compute-capable regions for serverless functions. Content is cached at edge locations closest to users, with built-in cache shielding that routes cache misses through a single bucket lookup rather than hitting the origin directly.

Incremental Static Regeneration (ISR) caches rendered pages at the edge and updates them without rebuilding your entire site:

• Global purge completes in approximately 300 milliseconds
• Tag-based invalidation lets you purge related content together using revalidateTag() in your application code, propagating across CDN cache, Runtime Cache, and Data Cache
• Max 128 tags per response, 256 bytes per tag, 16 tags per bulk API call
• Stale content preserved on revalidation failure with a 30-second retry window
• No write units incurred if content is unchanged during revalidation
• Framework support includes Next.js, SvelteKit, Nuxt, Astro, and Gatsby

Global Config provides a global key-value store for feature flags, A/B testing, critical redirects, and IP blocking:

• Most reads complete in less than 1 millisecond, with P99 under 15 milliseconds
• Writes propagate globally in up to 10 seconds
• Store sizes up to 512 KB on Enterprise
• No redeployment required to update values

Stale-while-revalidate serves cached content immediately while regenerating fresh content in the background. Automatic stale-if-error preserves cached content when revalidation fails. Brotli compression reduces JavaScript by 14%, HTML by 21%, and CSS by 17% compared to gzip.

Akamai comparison: Akamai's caching assumes content rarely changes, defaulting to a 365-day TTL with Vary header stripping to maximize cache hit rates. This works well for static media catalogs but means cache invalidation is slow, with ECCU purge taking 30-40 minutes to propagate compared to Vercel's 300ms ISR invalidation.

Where Akamai goes deeper is origin offload and media delivery. Tiered distribution and Cloud Wrapper route requests through intermediate caching layers so fewer requests reach the origin, which matters for high-bandwidth media workloads. Prefetching positions media segments at edge before users request them. Partial object caching handles files over 10MB (required for 100MB+), supporting catalogs up to 100TB+. EdgeKV provides edge key-value storage with eventual consistency and up to 10 seconds for propagation, compared to Global Config's sub-1ms reads.

Every Vercel deployment ships with a multi-layered security stack, active from first deploy with no setup required.

DDoS mitigation:

• Covers L3, L4, and L7 attacks using hundreds of detection signals to fingerprint request patterns
• Mitigated traffic is not counted toward usage billing
• Alerts fire via webhook or Slack when malicious traffic exceeds 100,000 requests over 10 minutes

Vercel Firewall enforces rules in a defined execution order:

1. DDoS mitigation
2. IP blocking
3. Custom rules
4. Managed rulesets

WAF configuration changes propagate globally within 300ms with instant rollback to any previous version. Custom rules support six actions (log, deny, challenge, bypass, redirect, rate limit) with per-plan limits:

• Hobby: up to 3 custom rules
• Pro: up to 40 custom rules
• Enterprise: up to 1,000 custom rules, plus OWASP managed rulesets

Rate limiting is available on all plans:

• Counting is keyed by IP and JA4 TLS fingerprint on Hobby and Pro, with User Agent and arbitrary headers added on Enterprise
• Fixed window algorithm on all plans, token bucket on Enterprise
• The @vercel/firewall SDK enables programmatic rate limiting in backend code for conditions not available through the dashboard

Additional infrastructure protections:

• Secure Compute provides dedicated VPC, static egress IPs, and VPC peering for sensitive workloads
• Automatic HTTPS with TLS 1.3 and AES-256 encryption at rest
• TLS fingerprinting (JA4) on all plans for identifying and blocking traffic patterns across multiple IPs, with legacy JA3 on Enterprise

Compliance certifications include SOC 2 Type 2, ISO 27001:2022, PCI DSS v4.0, GDPR, and TISAX AL2. HIPAA BAA is available on Enterprise.

Akamai comparison: Akamai's security products (Prolexic, App & API Protector, Bot Manager Premier, Content Protector) each require separate configuration in Property Manager. This gives teams fine-grained control over each layer, including Prolexic SIEM delivery to Splunk, Microsoft Sentinel, Google SecOps, and ServiceNow, and Bot Manager's graduated response segments through the EdgeWorkers API. The tradeoff is setup complexity, as none of these activate automatically.

Where Akamai goes deeper is bot sophistication analysis and media delivery protection. Bot Manager Premier supports proof-of-work crypto challenges (AKAMAI_WEB_CRYPTO, AKAMAI_MOBILE_CRYPTO, GOOGLE_RECAPTCHA) that evaluate a client's ability to execute cryptographic operations, adding a detection layer beyond behavioral scoring. Content Protector combines protocol-level assessment, user interaction analysis, browser fingerprinting, and headless browser detection to classify and respond to scraping risk. For media-heavy applications, Akamai provides token authentication, session-level encryption, forensic watermarking for leak identification, geo/IP/referrer-based content targeting, and Enhanced Proxy Detection via GeoGuard.

Vercel's compute model is designed for modern web applications that need to run full application logic, not just serve cached files. Your code defines infrastructure requirements, and the platform provisions resources automatically.

Framework Defined Infrastructure

Vercel reads your framework's patterns and provisions the right compute automatically:

No configuration files or adapters required. This is the foundation of self-driving infrastructure: your code defines infrastructure, production informs code, and infrastructure adapts automatically.

Fluid compute

Fluid compute is a hybrid serverless model that combines serverless flexibility with server-like performance:

• Paid plans keep at least one instance warm, reducing cold starts
• Bytecode caching further reduces cold start times when new instances are needed
• Multiple invocations share a single instance, auto-scaling up to 30,000 (Pro) or 100,000+ (Enterprise)
• Error isolation ensures one broken request won't crash others

Active CPU pricing bills only during code execution. Time spent waiting for database queries, API responses, or AI model completions doesn't count toward compute costs.

AI infrastructure

For AI applications, Vercel provides purpose-built infrastructure:

• AI SDK provides primitives for building AI applications with streaming and tool calling
• AI Gateway provides access to 35+ providers and 200+ models through a single endpoint with zero token markup and automatic failovers
• waitUntil enables background processing after the response is sent

For AI workloads where most request time is waiting for model responses, Active CPU pricing means you're only billed for the fraction of time your code is actually executing.

Akamai comparison: EdgeWorkers runs JavaScript only (ES2015 modules, not Node.js) with six event handlers for request/response manipulation like header modification, URL rewriting, and content transformation. With 1.5-6MB memory and 4-10s timeouts depending on tier, EdgeWorkers is scoped to lightweight edge logic rather than full application workloads. Akamai has no framework detection, no active CPU pricing, and no AI-specific infrastructure.

Where Akamai provides compute that Vercel does not is traditional infrastructure. Linode offers full IaaS with shared CPU VMs from $5/month, dedicated CPU from $36/month, and GPU instances (RTX 4000 Ada, from $350/month) for ML training and inference. VPU-backed transcoding handles H.264/H.265/AV1 encoding at up to 8K resolution. Managed Kubernetes (LKE) provides container orchestration, and 8 Cloudlets offer pre-built edge logic for waiting rooms, A/B testing, phased release, and redirects without custom code.

Vercel's developer experience is built around a simple workflow: connect a Git repository, push code, and the platform handles the rest. Framework detection, infrastructure provisioning, and deployment happen automatically.

Framework support

Vercel supports 35+ frameworks with automatic detection:

Each framework deploys with server-side rendering, streaming, and middleware working automatically. No adapters or configuration files required.

Next.js integration

Vercel is the native Next.js platform, shipping framework updates and platform support together. Server Components, Partial Prerendering, and App Router work immediately.

Git workflow and deployments

Every Git push creates a deployment. Preview deployments give each pull request a unique URL for review before merging to production.

Preview protection options: Vercel Authentication, Password Protection, Trusted IPs.

Collaboration

• Viewer seats are free and unlimited, so designers, PMs, and reviewers don't use paid licenses
• Vercel Toolbar provides Layout Shift Tool, Interaction Timing, Accessibility Audit, and in-browser Feature Flag management
• Draft Mode and Edit Mode support CMS integrations

Vercel Agent

Vercel Agent is a suite of AI-powered development tools:

Akamai comparison: Akamai EdgeWorkers requires manual configuration for each property. The platform doesn't include framework detection, preview deployments per pull request, or Git-based workflow. Deploying requires staging activation before production.

Understanding why your application is slow and where errors occur requires visibility into every layer of your infrastructure.

Additional capabilities:

• Real-time usage dashboards with function invocations, error rates, and duration metrics
• OpenTelemetry support with Dash0 native integration and custom HTTP endpoints
• Functions deploy in your chosen region with automatic cross-region failover

Akamai comparison: Akamai provides Traffic Reports, Breadcrumbs for per-transaction visibility, and DataStream 2 for log delivery. EdgeWorkers monitoring includes debug headers and mPulse integration for JavaScript error tracking.

Vercel uses transparent per-resource pricing so you can forecast costs as traffic increases.

Cost management features:

• Free unlimited Viewer seats on Pro/Enterprise (designers, PMs, reviewers don't consume paid licenses)
• Active CPU pricing excludes time spent waiting on databases, APIs, or AI model responses
• Spend Management with notifications at 50%, 75%, and 100% thresholds, plus optional auto-pause of production deployments
• Regional pricing published for all 20 regions so you can choose regions based on cost and latency tradeoffs

Akamai comparison: Akamai uses contract-based enterprise pricing. EdgeWorkers billing is based on event invocations per month with different rates per resource tier. Linode (Akamai's cloud compute) starts at $5/month for shared CPU instances.

The right platform depends on what you're building and what matters most to your team.

Teams building modern web applications, AI workloads, or projects that benefit from fast iteration will find Vercel purpose-built for their needs.

Both Vercel and Akamai provide global infrastructure for deploying and delivering web applications at scale.

With Vercel, you push your code and the platform handles the rest. Framework detection, infrastructure provisioning, security, and scaling happen automatically on every deploy.

Ready to deploy? Start with Hobby for personal projects or explore Pro for production workloads.