Vercel lost more visits than the whole market did. How?

The leader shrank by nearly half, yet its rivals kept climbing. The math is stranger than it looks.

Written by Miles Foster, Owner and tester, RankDude.21 October 2026 / 2 min read

Vercel lost about 658,000 visits from Google in a year. The whole market lost only about 253,000. So somebody else grew a lot, and here is who.

The short version

-46.1%: Vercel's visits from Google in one year.
+27.1%: market growth if you leave Vercel out.
Netlify: up 47.7%, now close behind Vercel.
Railway: up 71.4%, with Render up 62.3%.

WorldDeployment platforms' visits from Google

Low 1.5MHigh 3.1MAverage 2.5M

Hover, tap, or use the arrow keys to inspect a month

Estimated monthly visits from Google, worldwide, all tracked deployment platforms. Source: RankDude analysis of DataForSEO data.

One big fall

Vercel is still the most visited site here. It gets nearly 3 in 10 visits.

But in a year, it lost about 658,000 visits from Google.

The whole market lost only about 253,000. That's wild.

So Vercel lost more than the market did. Someone else must have grown. Who?

Everyone else climbed

Netlify rose 47.7%, to about 652,000 visits. It now sits close behind Vercel.

Render rose 62.3%, to about 403,000.

Railway rose 71.4%, to about 370,000.

The small ones jumped too. Northflank grew 159.3%, to about 29,000.

Encore Cloud grew about three times, to about 18,000.

So the crowd is growing. Only the leader shrank.

The numbers

Vercel's visits from Googlein 12 months: -46%
Market without Vercelin 12 months: +27%
US name searches, Vercelsame as Netlify: 246K

The September slide

August was the market's best month ever. Then September fell 14.1%.

Vercel alone dropped 28.1% in that one month.

Without Vercel, the market fell just 6.7%.

And Render still grew 11.2% that month. So what is going on with Vercel?

The name puzzle

Here's the strange part. People search for Vercel's name more, not less.

A year ago, it had about 135,000 US name searches. Now it has about 246,000.

Netlify has the exact same number, about 246,000.

My guess? Fans still look for Vercel by name. But other searches may now land on rivals. I can't prove that from this data.

The old name fades

Heroku had a rough year. It fell from about 228,000 visits to about 82,000.

It has dropped every month in this data. So where does that leave the market?

The bigger picture

Still crowded at the top. About 87% of visits go to the top five sites.

The US sends only about 1 in 10 visits.

You can see every month on my deployment platforms statistics page.

“The market isn't shrinking. Vercel is. Those are very different stories.”
Miles Foster

How I measured this

Visits are DataForSEO estimates of visits from Google search, worldwide. They are estimates, not people. Name searches are US Google Ads figures.

More in my methodology and on the DataForSEO page.

Source: RankDude analysis of DataForSEO data, September 2026.

On this site

Miles FosterOwner and tester, RankDude. Miles Foster owns RankDude and runs every hands-on test in person: one written procedure per category, the same sample sizes and scoring for every tool in it, with the measurements and screenshots published on each review's full test results.