Vercel has moved WebSocket support out of beta, so live chat and streaming apps on its platform now run on a fully supported feature with familiar pricing.
Vercel, a company that hosts websites and web apps, has made WebSocket support in Vercel Functions generally available. That means it is out of beta and fully released. A WebSocket is a live, two-way connection between an app and a server. It lets messages flow both ways without the page reloading, which is how live chat and instant updates work.
The feature launched as a public beta in late June. Since then, Vercel says its CDN, the network that delivers content to users, has served 300 million WebSocket connections. It now serves about 15 million per day. Vercel says customers use WebSockets for AI chat, streaming and realtime multiplayer apps. They also power the realtime models in Vercel's AI Gateway.
WebSocket connections follow the same limits and pricing as other Function invocations. Vercel says that under its Active CPU pricing, CPU is billed only for the time spent processing messages. The announcement does not give specific prices or limit figures.
The news mostly matters to businesses and developers who build on Vercel. Anyone planning live chat, status screens or other instant-update features there can now treat WebSockets as a supported option. There is no separate pricing scheme to plan around. Vercel's announcement does not say whether anything changes for apps that used the beta.
Live two-way connections on Vercel are now a fully supported feature, priced like other Functions, with CPU billed only while messages are processed.
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