Vercel's Free Year of Domains Now Covers .app and .dev: Eight TLDs, One per Team, Auto-Renewing at List Price

Q: 3. Is it worth claiming?

Yes, if: You already pay for Vercel Pro and genuinely need a real domain. The project should outlive a year. Moving a domain later is a nuisance; automatic renewal itself is not the problem. Do not upgrade to Pro for it: An entry-level TLD costs on the order of ten-something dollars a year, while

Article last updated：2026-09-08

Vercel announced on 2026-09-02 that the free domain Pro teams can claim for one year now includes .app and .dev, taking the eligible list to eight TLDs.

For anyone standing up a portfolio or a small product site that is a real saving — but two clauses deserve a careful read first. Verified 2026-09-08.

1. The eight eligible TLDs

Per the announcement:

.app　.dev　.online　.site　.space　.store　.tech　.website

The first two are new. .app and .dev differ from the other six in one respect that matters to developers: both are HTTPS-only at the browser level (they sit on the HSTS preload list), so nobody can reach your service over plain http.

2. Two clauses to read first

The stated terms:

One domain per team. Not per account, and not per year.
Premium domains are not eligible — the short, memorable names registries price separately are out of scope.
It renews automatically after the first year at the regular price shown at checkout when you claim it.

The third is the easy one to miss: only year one is free, and year two bills automatically at a price displayed at the moment you claim. Renewal prices for .app and .dev typically run higher than promotional TLDs like .site or .online — read that number at checkout, because it is what you actually pay long term.

3. Is it worth claiming?

Yes, if:

You already pay for Vercel Pro and genuinely need a real domain.
The project should outlive a year. Moving a domain later is a nuisance; automatic renewal itself is not the problem.

Do not upgrade to Pro for it:

An entry-level TLD costs on the order of ten-something dollars a year, while Pro is a monthly subscription an order of magnitude above that. Upgrading to save on a domain does not add up.
If you are still experimenting, use the platform subdomain. Buy a domain when the product is ready for an audience.

4. Three checks before claiming

Confirm the renewal price shown at checkout, not just the free first year.
Confirm this is the one your team wants to spend — there is only one per team.
Confirm the name is not premium. If it is, the offer does not apply and you pay standard registration.

Verification records for other free tiers: OpenRouter free model daily limits.

Source read directly on 2026-09-08: Vercel’s changelog entry Free domain with Pro offer now includes .app and .dev (2026-09-02). The eight TLDs, one-per-team limit, premium exclusion and automatic renewal at the checkout price are official wording. Per-TLD renewal prices are shown at checkout and are not recorded here; the HTTPS-only property of .app and .dev is an existing rule of those TLDs, not part of this announcement.

What Amo and Pimi think

Amo Finding faults

Wait, you're only telling half the story. Two limits hit you at the same time — yes, you get US$5 in credit per month, but you're also capped at 7 messages a day; even if you haven't used up your credit, message #8 today just won't go through. With this "money's still there, but the message count is gone" design, what you can actually do is much less than you're making it sound. And it's locked into the Vercel ecosystem — deployment goes through Vercel, sync goes through GitHub — if you want to move elsewhere you have to rebuild everything yourself. Why didn't you mention that?

Pimi Advantages

Let me start with the good stuff! The free plan gives you everything it should — you can deploy straight to Vercel, use Design Mode to visually edit the layout, and sync with GitHub. Similar AI site-building tools usually lock down at least one of those three, but this one doesn't. US$5 in credit plus 7 messages a day is absolutely enough to prototype a small project. …okay fine, that part's true, I didn't mention that daily cap.

So, do you need to pay or not?

For a one-off small prototype, and you're already using Vercel: the free plan is enough. For daily iteration, or wanting to deploy independently of Vercel: 7 messages a day will quickly become a bottleneck, and you'll need to budget for the paid tier.

Let's take a look at these

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