Vercel makes production deployment protection free and moves Password Protection to per-project pricing

Production protection goes free on every plan

Vercel has removed the price barrier from one of its core deployment security features. According to the Vercel blog, Vercel Authentication can now protect every deployment URL in a project, including production domains, at no additional cost on Hobby, Pro, and Enterprise plans. Until this change, covering all deployments required the Advanced Deployment Protection add-on at $150 per month.

When the protection is active, a deployment opens only for visitors who sign in to Vercel and already have access to the project. Vercel positions the feature for internal tools, private dashboards, and sites that are not ready for a public launch — work that often runs on production infrastructure but should not be reachable by anyone holding the URL.

The setting lives in the project's Security section: open Deployment Protection in the sidebar and pick "All Deployments" from the dropdown. Teams can also promote the configuration to a team-wide default, so Vercel Authentication guards every new project from the moment it is created.

Deployment Protection Exceptions, which keep specific preview domains public while the rest of a project stays protected, are now free on every plan as well.

Password Protection moves to per-project billing on Pro

A second changelog post covers Password Protection, the option that gates deployments behind a password the team sets instead of requiring a Vercel login. According to the Vercel blog, Pro teams can now enable it for $20 per project per month. Previously, Pro teams had to buy password protection at the team level for every project; it can now be purchased for individual projects.

The toggle sits in the same place — Security, then Deployment Protection — and Vercel notes that turning it off stops future charges for that project.

The two mechanisms serve different audiences. Vercel Authentication is for people who can sign in with Vercel credentials and already belong to the project. Password Protection targets outside viewers, such as clients reviewing work, who only need a shared password. With authentication-based protection now free, the paid option becomes a targeted add-on for external sharing rather than the primary way to keep a deployment private.

Why it matters

The free-tier change removes what was a significant cost for anyone running private production sites. A $150-per-month add-on was hard to justify for hobby projects, internal dashboards, or small teams, which effectively pushed them toward leaving deployments unprotected or improvising their own access control. Free protection on every plan, combined with the new team-wide default, makes a locked-down posture the easy path rather than a paid upgrade.

The Password Protection change cuts the other way for some customers. Per-project billing is cheaper for organizations that protect only one or two projects, but costs now scale with the number of protected projects, so teams running many password-gated sites should review their bills before the next cycle.

Together, the two moves — both announced on 9 September — shift Vercel's deployment security model toward free, account-based protection as the baseline, with paid password access as an opt-in reserved for external audiences.