The Evaluation
We spent a week evaluating Cloudflare Workers + D1 as an alternative to our Vercel + Neon stack. Here's what we learned.
What We Tested
- Cloudflare Workers for API routes
- D1 for SQLite database
- Hono as the web framework
- Drizzle ORM for database access
Pros of Cloudflare
- Pricing - Generally cheaper at scale
- Global edge by default - No configuration needed
- D1 - SQLite at the edge is compelling
Why We Stayed with Vercel
1. Ecosystem Integration
Vercel's integration with Neon is seamless. Database branching, preview environments, and automatic environment variables — it all just works.
2. Next.js Optimization
Since we're using Next.js, Vercel's optimizations (ISR, image optimization, edge middleware) are unmatched.
3. Better Auth Compatibility
Our auth library (Better Auth) had some quirks with Cloudflare's runtime that would require additional work.
4. Developer Experience
Vercel's dashboard, logs, and deployment experience are simply better for our team.
Conclusion
Cloudflare is excellent, and we might reconsider in the future. But for now, Vercel's ecosystem advantages outweigh Cloudflare's cost benefits.
The branch feat/cloudflare-migration has been deleted. Sometimes the best decision is knowing when to stop.