Cloud//Vercel//Vercel Functions

Serverless functions on Vercel. In a Next.js project, these are the API Routes, backend code that lives in the same repo as the frontend.

Serverless functions on Vercel. In a Next.js project, these are the API Routes, backend code that lives in the same repo as the frontend.

API Routes in Next.js (app/api/*/route.ts) deploy as Vercel Functions automatically

Run on AWS Lambda under the hood, same execution model (container spin-up, cold starts, per-invocation billing)

Timeout: 10s (Hobby), 60s (Pro), 300s (Enterprise). If a function takes longer, it dies. For heavy batch work (e.g. processing thousands of Gmail messages), a single function will timeout. You need a job queue like Inngest or Trigger.dev that breaks the work into chunks and processes them sequentially.

The "backend that lives inside your frontend project": you define routes in Next.js, Vercel deploys them as serverless functions

Vercel also offers Cron Jobs, scheduled functions that run at fixed intervals (hourly, daily, etc.). Better for recurring batch work than trying to cram everything into one function call.

Contrast with Workers: Vercel Functions are heavier (Lambda containers), slower to start (cold starts), but can run longer and have full Node.js access