Knock vs Vercel
Notifications-as-a-service: in-app feeds, email, push, SMS, chat via one API
vs. Frontend cloud for Next.js and modern web frameworks
Pricing tiers
Knock
Developer
Free forever. 10K messages, 500 guide users, 500 AI credits/month.
$0 base (usage-based)
Starter
$250/mo. 50K messages, 2.5K guide users, 2K AI credits. Remove branding.
$250/mo
Enterprise
Custom pricing. White-label, i18n, data warehouse, Datadog, SCIM, SAML, HIPAA/BAA.
Custom
Vercel
Hobby (Free)
Free forever. 100 GB bandwidth, 1M functions, 360 GB-hrs memory, 1M edge requests. 1 developer. Hard caps.
Free
Pro
$20/user/month. 1 TB bandwidth, pay-as-you-go overages. Team seats, concurrent builds.
$20/mo
Enterprise
Custom pricing. SLA, SSO, audit logs, dedicated support.
Custom
Free-tier quotas head-to-head
Comparing starter on Knock vs hobby on Vercel.
| Metric | Knock | Vercel |
|---|---|---|
| bandwidth gb month | — | 100 GB/month |
| edge requests | — | 1000000 requests/month |
| function invocations | — | 1000000 invocations/month |
| guide users | 2500 users | — |
| guide users overage | $0.05/user USD/user | — |
| memory gb hrs | — | 360 GB-hrs/month |
| messages monthly | 50000 messages/mo | — |
| messages overage | $0.005/message USD/message | — |
| team members | — | 1 users |
Features
Knock · 13 features
- AI Agents — Autonomous notification drafting & workflow generation.
- Batch + Digest — Group notifications into digests on schedule or window.
- Chat — Slack, Microsoft Teams, Discord.
- Email — Send via SendGrid/Postmark/Resend/Mailgun/AWS SES as relays.
- Guides — In-product messaging, announcements, modals, banners.
- i18n / Localization — Translate templates by user locale.
- In-App Feed — Notification inbox with React/Vue/iOS/Android drop-in components.
- Multi-tenancy — Per-tenant branding, preferences, quiet hours.
- Outbound Webhooks — Subscribe to delivery events.
- Preferences — User + tenant preference center with granular controls.
- Push — iOS (APNs), Android (FCM), Expo, Web Push.
- SMS — Twilio, MessageBird, Telnyx, Vonage as providers.
- Workflows — Visual notification orchestration (branch, batch, delay, throttle).
Vercel · 15 features
- Cron Jobs — Scheduled serverless functions. JSON config in vercel.json.
- Edge Functions — V8-isolate serverless functions at edge locations. Lower cold start than Lambda.
- Edge Middleware — Intercept requests at edge before hitting origin — auth, routing, A/B tests.
- Git-based Deploys — Auto-deploy from GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket on every push. Preview URLs for every…
- Image Optimization — On-the-fly resize, format conversion (AVIF, WebP), CDN caching.
- Incremental Static Regeneration — Re-generate static pages on-demand or via revalidate. Next.js-native.
- Log Drains — Stream logs to Datadog, Axiom, Logtail, HTTP endpoints.
- Preview Deployments — Unique URL per Git branch/PR. Password-protect or share. Infinite.
- Serverless Functions — Node.js, Python, Go. AWS Lambda under the hood. Up to 15 min duration.
- Speed Insights — Real User Monitoring. FCP, LCP, CLS, INP per page.
- Vercel Blob — Managed object storage (S3-compatible API).
- Vercel KV (Redis) — Managed Redis via Upstash. Edge-accessible.
- Vercel Marketplace — One-click integrations: Supabase, Clerk, Sentry, PostHog, Resend, 100+ services.
- Vercel Postgres — Managed Neon Postgres. Edge-accessible with @vercel/postgres.
- Web Analytics — Privacy-friendly web analytics. Core Web Vitals, visitors, pages.
Developer interfaces
| Kind | Knock | Vercel |
|---|---|---|
| CLI | Knock CLI | Vercel CLI |
| SDK | knockapi (Python), knockapi (Ruby), knock-elixir, knock-go, knock-java, @knocklabs/node, @knocklabs/react | @vercel/client |
| REST | Knock REST API | Vercel REST API |
| MCP | Knock MCP Server | Vercel MCP |
| OTHER | Outbound Webhooks | Edge Runtime Bindings |
Staxly is an independent catalog of developer platforms. Some links to Knock and Vercel may be affiliate links — Staxly may earn a commission if you sign up through them, at no extra cost to you. Pricing is verified against vendor pages at publication time — reconfirm before buying.
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