The short answer
If your organisation is standardised on AWS — procurement runs through an existing agreement, security lives in IAM, data residency is settled by your regions — Amplify keeps the front end inside that contract, and that alone often decides it. If the front end is Next.js and shipping velocity matters more than cloud consolidation, Vercel is the stronger platform: first-party framework support and a preview workflow your whole marketing team will actually use. And there’s a third path both pages of the vendor comparison skip: deploying the same stack into your own AWS account with your own pipeline — Amplify is one way to host on AWS, not the only one.
Where they differ
| AWS Amplify | Vercel | |
|---|---|---|
| Where it runs | Inside your own AWS account — CloudFront, S3, and Lambda under your IAM, your regions, your controls | On Vercel's managed platform — edge network and Fluid Compute operated by the vendor |
| Procurement & billing | Part of the AWS bill; spend counts toward existing AWS commitments; no new vendor to onboard | A separate vendor and contract — usually fast on Pro, a full procurement cycle for the enterprise tier |
| Framework support | Broad framework support; Next.js server rendering works but tends to trail new framework releases | First-party Next.js — ISR, RSC, image optimisation on release day; strong Astro, Nuxt, SvelteKit support |
| Workflow | Git-connected CI/CD with branch deploys and previews — functional, but console-and-config flavoured | Preview deployments as the review culture: per-PR URLs, comments, stakeholder sign-off on real pages |
| Data residency & compliance | Whatever your AWS posture already is — regions, IAM, audit trails, and certifications you've cleared once | Enterprise tier: SOC 2, SSO/SAML, audit logs, EU regions, contractual SLAs — solid, but a second vendor review |
| Ecosystem pull | Natural reach into the rest of AWS: Cognito, AppSync, DynamoDB, existing VPC resources | Integrations-led: CMSs, commerce, analytics plug in at the application layer |
| Cost shape | Usage-based AWS pricing — low floor, but attribution across CloudFront/Lambda line items takes discipline | Per-seat plus metered usage — a higher, more legible bill with spend management built in |
Global CDN Performance
Response times measured from 15 global locations for static content delivery (HTML, images, and other assets). These measurements reflect how quickly content reaches users through each provider's CDN.
| Location |  AWS Amplify |  Vercel | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| TTFB | Total Load Time | TTFB | Total Load Time | |
 us-west-1 | 207ms | 2046ms | 53ms | 59ms |
| us-east-1 | 150ms | 180ms | 29ms | 40ms |
 ca-central-1 | 166ms | 172ms | 31ms | 33ms |
 sa-east-1 | 270ms | 281ms | 34ms | 43ms |
 eu-central-1 | 52ms | 63ms | 27ms | 33ms |
 eu-west-2 | 85ms | 105ms | 30ms | 39ms |
 eu-west-3 | 63ms | 69ms | 27ms | 31ms |
 eu-north-1 | 81ms | 92ms | 40ms | 45ms |
 eu-south-1 | 74ms | 81ms | 52ms | 54ms |
 af-south-1 | 262ms | 268ms | 26ms | 29ms |
 ap-southeast-1 | 225ms | 232ms | 29ms | 32ms |
 ap-northeast-1 | 286ms | 296ms | 34ms | 38ms |
 ap-east-1 | 250ms | 256ms | 28ms | 31ms |
 ap-southeast-2 | 310ms | 315ms | 29ms | 32ms |
 ap-northeast-2 | 285ms | 293ms | 32ms | 35ms |
What the measurements show
In this 9 August 2026 snapshot, Vercel recorded the lower median CDN TTFB across the 15 monitored locations: 30ms versus 207ms for AWS Amplify. It returned the faster TTFB in 15 of 15 locations; median total load time was 35ms versus 232ms.
Method: Checkly requests the test endpoints from 15 locations every 60 minutes; the table reports averages from recent checks. Lower is better. These results describe the monitored endpoints, not every project or workload—application code, cache state, region configuration, and traffic patterns can change production performance.
Serverless Node.js Function Performance
Serverless Functions (Node) timings measure the performance of backend operations executed in serverless environments.
Note
We test endpoints every 60 minutes, so these measurements predominantly capture cold-start performance. This represents a worst-case scenario; production applications with more frequent requests often keep functions warm.
| Location | AWS Amplify | Vercel | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| TTFB | E2E Latency | TTFB | E2E Latency | |
| us-west-1 | 376ms | 386ms | 44ms | 56ms |
| us-east-1 | 304ms | 318ms | 22ms | 33ms |
| ca-central-1 | 309ms | 315ms | 15ms | 16ms |
| sa-east-1 | 404ms | 413ms | 22ms | 28ms |
| eu-central-1 | 408ms | 417ms | 17ms | 22ms |
| eu-west-2 | 397ms | 410ms | 17ms | 29ms |
| eu-west-3 | 472ms | 478ms | 16ms | 18ms |
| eu-north-1 | 453ms | 464ms | 29ms | 33ms |
| eu-south-1 | 473ms | 477ms | 45ms | 48ms |
| af-south-1 | 634ms | 638ms | 16ms | 18ms |
| ap-southeast-1 | 455ms | 460ms | 17ms | 21ms |
| ap-northeast-1 | 409ms | 416ms | 22ms | 26ms |
| ap-east-1 | 366ms | 371ms | 15ms | 17ms |
| ap-southeast-2 | 366ms | 370ms | 15ms | 18ms |
| ap-northeast-2 | 573ms | 580ms | 32ms | 35ms |
What the measurements show
For the hourly, cold-start-oriented Node.js checks in this 9 August 2026 snapshot, Vercel recorded the lower median TTFB across the 15 monitored locations: 17ms versus 408ms for AWS Amplify. It returned the faster TTFB in 15 of 15 locations; median end-to-end latency was 26ms versus 416ms.
Method: Checkly requests the test endpoints from 15 locations every 60 minutes; the table reports averages from recent checks. Lower is better. These results describe the monitored endpoints, not every project or workload—application code, cache state, region configuration, and traffic patterns can change production performance.
Choose AWS Amplify when
- Procurement, security review, and data residency are already settled on AWS — adding a vendor costs more than it buys.
- Committed AWS spend makes front-end hosting effectively pre-paid.
- The front end needs to sit close to AWS-native services and VPC resources your teams already run.
- Your platform or DevOps team wants every workload under one IAM and audit model.
Choose Vercel when
- The estate is Next.js and framework features need to work as designed, on day one of each release.
- Marketing velocity is the goal: many contributors, frequent campaign launches, preview-driven sign-off.
- You don’t have (or want) a cloud team owning front-end infrastructure — the platform is the ops.
If you’re switching
In either direction, the application code mostly carries over — the work is around it. Moving to Vercel: recreate redirects and headers, re-point DNS, move environment secrets out of AWS-native stores, and re-model the bill per seat and per unit of traffic. Moving onto AWS — via Amplify or your own pipeline — budget real engineering time for what Vercel was doing invisibly: image optimisation, ISR-equivalent caching, and preview environments all need explicit setup, and framework behaviour should be tested rather than assumed. In both cases, map every redirect before cutover and keep analytics continuity so you can compare traffic honestly across the switch.
The Bejamas take
We treat “host it on your own AWS” as a first-class answer, not a fallback — for organisations with settled cloud contracts, residency requirements, or a platform team that wants ownership, it’s often the right one, whether that’s Amplify or a purpose-built pipeline in your account. Where we steer teams to Vercel is when the preview workflow and first-party Next.js support translate directly into pages shipped per week — and nobody in-house wants to own the infrastructure. In an audit we price both paths against your traffic, contracts, and team, and recommend the one the numbers support.