Moving to Vercel: From GCP Cloud Run to Simplified Deployment

Apr 2, 2025

After running production workloads on Google Cloud Platform's Cloud Run for several years, I recently made the decision to migrate to Vercel. While GCP served me well, the complexity and overhead of managing cloud infrastructure was starting to outweigh the benefits, especially for frontend applications and static sites.

The GCP Reality Check

Don't get me wrong—GCP Cloud Run is powerful. But here's what you actually need to get a production-ready setup:

  • Cloud Run service for your application
  • Load Balancer for SSL termination and routing
  • VPC configuration for network security
  • Cloud Firewall rules to protect your services
  • Cloud DNS for domain management
  • Cloud Monitoring for observability
  • Identity and Access Management (IAM) policies
  • Cloud Build for CI/CD pipelines

Each component requires configuration, monitoring, and maintenance. While this gives you incredible flexibility, it also means you're essentially building and maintaining your own platform.

Enter Vercel: Simplicity Without Compromise

Vercel takes a radically different approach. Everything I needed was included out of the box:

Zero Configuration Infrastructure

  • Automatic HTTPS with global CDN
  • Built-in DDoS protection and Web Application Firewall (WAF)
  • Edge functions for server-side logic
  • Automatic scaling and performance optimization

Developer Experience That Actually Works

  • Git-based deployments with automatic previews
  • Near-instantaneous builds (seriously, 10-30 seconds vs 5-10 minutes on Cloud Build)
  • Real-time collaboration with preview deployments
  • Built-in performance monitoring and analytics

Observability Out of the Box

One of the biggest wins was getting Vercel Analytics and Speed Insights without any setup. On GCP, I had to configure Cloud Monitoring, set up custom dashboards, and manually instrument performance tracking. Vercel gives you:

  • Real User Monitoring (RUM) automatically
  • Core Web Vitals tracking
  • Geographic performance insights
  • User flow analytics

The Migration Reality

The actual migration was surprisingly smooth. What took me weeks to set up on GCP was deployed on Vercel in minutes:

# GCP deployment (simplified)
gcloud run deploy --image gcr.io/project/app \
  --platform managed \
  --region us-central1 \
  --allow-unauthenticated \
  --memory 512Mi \
  --cpu 1 \
  --concurrency 100 \
  --max-instances 10

# Plus load balancer config, firewall rules, DNS setup...

vs.

# Vercel deployment
vercel --prod

Performance Gains

The performance improvements were immediately noticeable:

  • Build times: 5-10 minutes → 1-2 minutes
  • Cold start: 2-3 seconds → ~100ms (Edge Functions)
  • Global latency: Improved significantly thanks to Vercel's edge network
  • Cache hit ratio: Much better with intelligent caching, Almost 99% on some clients.

Cost Comparison

Here's the honest truth about pricing. Yes, Vercel is more expensive on paper, but when you factor in the total cost of ownership:

GCP Monthly Costs (for a medium traffic site):

  • Cloud Run: ~$15
  • Load Balancer: ~$20
  • Cloud Build: ~$10
  • Monitoring: ~$5
  • Artifact registry: ~$5
  • Engineering time: Priceless (but costly)

Vercel Pro: $40/month

The slight price increase is more than offset by the reduction in operational overhead and the developer productivity gains.

What I Miss About GCP

To be fair, there are some things I miss:

  • Granular control over infrastructure components
  • Multi-cloud flexibility and avoiding vendor lock-in
  • Custom networking configurations for complex setups

The Verdict

For most web applications, especially those focused on performance and developer experience, Vercel is a game-changer. The platform handles the complexity of modern web infrastructure so you can focus on building features instead of managing servers.

The migration taught me an important lesson: sometimes the best architecture is the one that gets out of your way. While GCP gives you all the tools to build anything, Vercel gives you a platform that just works.

If you're running a frontend application or static site on traditional cloud infrastructure, consider whether you're solving infrastructure problems or building product features. For me, Vercel let me get back to what I do best: building reliable, fast applications that users love.