Vercel adds .app and .dev to free one-year domain offer for Pro teams

What changed

Vercel has widened the free-domain perk attached to its Pro plan. According to a changelog post on the Vercel blog, Pro teams claiming a free one-year domain can now choose a .app or .dev address, adding two developer-flavoured top-level domains to an offer that previously covered six other extensions. The full list of eligible TLDs now stands at eight: .app, .dev, .online, .site, .space, .store, .tech and .website.

The post notes that this builds on a recent announcement that every Pro team can claim one free domain for a year, so the change is an expansion of eligibility rather than a brand-new programme.

How the terms work

The conditions, as laid out by Vercel, are simple but worth reading before claiming:

• The offer covers one domain per team, so it cannot be spread across multiple projects.
• Premium domains are excluded, meaning the perk applies to standard registrations only.
• After the first year, the domain renews automatically at the regular price shown at checkout when you claim it. The renewal rate is therefore visible up front, but the renewal itself happens on its own, so teams that do not want to keep the domain need to act before the year is up.

Vercel points interested teams to its domains page to claim the offer and to a free-domain FAQ for the complete terms.

Why these two TLDs

.app and .dev are the most obviously developer-oriented additions in the set. Both are operated by Google Registry, and both sit on the HSTS preload list, which requires browsers to connect over HTTPS for every site on those domains. That fits naturally with Vercel's hosting model, where projects get HTTPS certificates by default.

In practice, the new options give Pro teams an easy way to attach a polished identity of their own, rather than a vercel.app subdomain, to side projects, internal tools, documentation sites or product landing pages during their first year.

Why it matters

The expansion is modest in isolation, but it fits a clear pattern among platform vendors: pulling more of the web stack, from builds and hosting to DNS and domain registration, into a single billed relationship. A free first-year domain removes one of the last bits of friction between a project being deployed and it being live on a proper domain, which tends to make teams stickier and increases the platform's role in how a project is run day to day.

The choice of .app and .dev also signals who the offer is really aimed at. Extensions such as .store or .site suit storefronts and marketing pages; .app and .dev suit exactly the audience Vercel already hosts. That makes the perk more likely to be claimed, and more likely to convert into a paid renewal once the free year ends.

The main caveat is that renewal. Because the domain renews automatically at the regular price after year one, teams should note the price shown at checkout and keep an eye on the renewal date. A free year is a discount, not a free domain, and an unattended renewal turns a giveaway into a recurring line item on the team's bill.