No. 21 of 30 ยท Platform-native and free
Vercel Web Analytics
Analytics that ship with the deployment, for teams who already live in the Vercel dashboard.
It attributes traffic to individual deployments, so you can see what a release did to your numbers.
The verdict
Vercel Web Analytics exists so that a Next.js team never has to leave the dashboard they already have open. Add the package, deploy, and pageviews, referrers, paths, countries and devices appear beside your builds. It is cookieless and needs no consent banner, and Speed Insights sits alongside it reporting real Core Web Vitals from your users.
The setup score of 10 is earned honestly: for a project already on Vercel this is the least friction of anything on this list, one import and one component. Deployment attribution is the feature nothing else here offers, and for a team shipping several times a day it makes regressions visible quickly.
What you actually get
It is also the most locked-in option on the list, which is what the data score of 3 records. The analytics are tied to the hosting, the retention is tied to the plan, export is limited, and if you leave Vercel you leave your history behind. That is a real cost for a measurement system, which is supposed to give you a long baseline.
Depth is minimal. Custom events exist on paid plans, but there are no funnels, no segmentation worth the name and no behaviour tooling. The event allowances are modest and overage is metered, so a busy site can find this costs more than a dedicated tool that does considerably more. The correct use is as a convenience layer for shipping teams, not as the analytics a business runs on.
Best for
Next.js and Vercel teams who want traffic and Core Web Vitals attributed to deployments without adding a vendor, and whose analytical questions are simple.
Getting it running
Install the package, add the component, deploy. Nothing else on this list is faster.
What to watch out for
Tied to Vercel hosting, with limited export and plan-bound retention, so leaving the platform means leaving your history. Shallow reporting with no funnels or segmentation. Event allowances are modest and overage is metered.
Pricing and practicalities
Included with Vercel plans, with an event allowance per plan and metered overage above it. Cookieless, so no consent banner. Speed Insights is a separate, related product. Read 2026-09-11.
Who should go elsewhere
Anyone who wants their analytics to outlive their hosting decision, where Umami or Matomo keep the data yours. Also not for teams with real conversion questions, where Absolutely Analytics or Plausible Analytics cost little and answer them.
How it compares
Against Cloudflare Web Analytics it is the same platform-native idea with a tighter integration and a worse ownership story. Against Plausible Analytics it is the convenience option, and Plausible is the one you keep.
The ten measures
Each measure is scored 0 to 10 and weighted. The overall figure is the weighted mean, and it is relative to the other 29 tools on this list rather than absolute. How this works.
What this rests on
Vercel's own Web Analytics and Speed Insights documentation, read 2026-09-11, including its plan allowances, custom event availability and privacy statements.
Desk research against Vercel's published documentation. Plan allowances change with Vercel's pricing, so the value score is a judgement about structure, tied to hosting and metered, rather than a fixed price comparison.
This is a desk review. I have not been given access by the vendor, I have no commercial relationship with them, and everything above is my opinion rather than a statement of fact. If something here is wrong, tell me and I will correct it.