Vercel just opted every free plan into AI training
Vercel's updated terms let the company use free-tier code and AI chats to train models — and share them with third parties. The opt-out deadline is March 31, 2026.
If you host a website or app on Vercel's free Hobby plan, your projects are now being used to train AI models — and potentially shared with outside companies. Vercel quietly updated its Terms of Service on March 17, 2026, opting in all free-tier users by default.
What Vercel is collecting — and who gets it
According to the official changelog, Vercel may use the following data from Hobby plan users to train AI and machine learning models:
- Your code and Vercel agent chats (conversations with Vercel's built-in AI assistant)
- Build and deployment telemetry (data about how your project compiles and runs) and error logs
- Aggregate traffic statistics from your hosted projects
This data isn't just for Vercel's own products. The terms explicitly say Vercel "may share your content with third parties for the purpose of developing and improving their products, including training and improving their AI and machine learning models."
Who is affected — and who isn't
In other words: privacy is a paid feature. Free users must actively protect themselves, while paying customers are protected automatically.
Developers are pushing back
On Vercel's own community forum, developers have called this approach "a lack of privacy for the user" and compared it unfavorably to OpenAI, which lets free ChatGPT users opt out of training without paying. One developer noted they couldn't even find the opt-out setting on their paid Premium plan, suggesting the toggle was only clearly available at the Enterprise tier.
This isn't the first time Vercel has faced backlash from its developer community. Previous controversies over pricing changes and platform lock-in have led some developers to migrate to alternatives like Netlify, Cloudflare Pages, and Railway.
What Vercel says it won't use
To its credit, Vercel states that personal information, account details, environment variables, API keys, and other sensitive content is anonymized and redacted before being used or shared. Open-source projects like Next.js, the AI SDK, and shadcn/ui are excluded from the policy — it applies only to platform-hosted user data.
How to opt out right now
If you're on Vercel's free plan and don't want your projects feeding AI models, here's what to do:
- Log into your Vercel dashboard
- Go to Team Settings → Data Preferences
- Toggle from Opt-In to Opt-Out
- Do this before March 31, 2026 to prevent any data from being used
If you opt out after March 31, Vercel will stop collecting new data — but anything already gathered before that date can still be used.
A growing pattern across the industry
Vercel isn't alone. Companies across the tech industry have been updating terms to allow AI training on user data — often with opt-out rather than opt-in defaults. Adobe, Zoom, and LinkedIn have all faced similar backlash. The pattern is clear: if a service is free, your data is increasingly the product being sold to AI companies.
For the millions of developers, students, and hobbyists who use Vercel's free tier to host personal projects, portfolios, and side apps, the message is simple: check your settings before the end of the month.
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