How I Hit 100 Vercel Deployments in a Day and What I Learned

The Wall of Red

I stared at my Vercel dashboard this morning and saw something painful: every single deployment — Error. A wall of red dots. And when I tried to create a new deployment manually, Vercel hit me with:

Resource is limited - try again in 25 minutes (more than 100, code: “api-deployments-free-per-day”).

100 deployments in one day. On the free tier. For copypastelearn.com.

How did I get here? Let me walk you through it so you don’t make the same mistakes.

What Triggers a Vercel Deployment

Every push to any branch in your connected GitHub repo triggers a deployment. That includes:

• Pushes to main (production)
• Pushes to feature branches (preview deployments)
• Pull request updates
• Even force-pushes and rebases

I was debugging multiple issues across several branches:

fix/force-dynamic-all-db-pages      → 4b75df2
001-mvp-platform                     → 03236e7
fix/dashboard-dynamic                → multiple commits
fix/sitemap-sort-order               → adb5a7c

Each fix-commit-push cycle burned a deployment. With 6+ branches and rapid iteration, I hit 100 before lunch.

The Math of Deployment Burn

Branches active:           6
Average commits per branch: 8-10
Rebases/force-pushes:      ~15
Vercel preview deploys:    1 per push per branch

Total: 6 × 10 + 15 = ~75 deploys
Plus main branch merges:   ~25
Grand total:               ~100 deploys 💥

How to Avoid This

1. Disable Auto-Deploy on Non-Production Branches

In your vercel.json:

{
  "git": {
    "deploymentEnabled": {
      "main": true,
      "001-mvp-platform": false,
      "fix/*": false
    }
  }
}

Or in the Vercel dashboard: Settings → Git → Ignored Build Step. Add a script that skips builds on branches you don’t need previews for.

2. Use the Ignored Build Step

Create a script that Vercel runs before building. If it exits with 0, the build proceeds. If it exits with 1, it’s skipped:

#!/bin/bash
# vercel-ignore-build.sh

# Only build on main or staging
if [[ "$VERCEL_GIT_COMMIT_REF" == "main" || "$VERCEL_GIT_COMMIT_REF" == "staging" ]]; then
  echo "✅ Building: $VERCEL_GIT_COMMIT_REF"
  exit 1  # Proceed with build
fi

echo "🚫 Skipping: $VERCEL_GIT_COMMIT_REF"
exit 0  # Skip build

Set this in Settings → General → Build & Development Settings → Ignored Build Step.

3. Batch Your Commits

Instead of push-per-fix:

# Don't do this
git commit -m "fix typo" && git push
git commit -m "fix another typo" && git push
git commit -m "actually fix it" && git push
# = 3 deployments

# Do this instead
git commit -m "fix typo"
git commit -m "fix another typo"
git commit -m "actually fix it"
git push
# = 1 deployment

4. Develop Locally First

This seems obvious, but when you’re debugging Prisma/auth issues that only manifest on Vercel’s serverless runtime, you’re tempted to “just push and see.” Resist. Use vercel dev locally:

# Run Vercel's serverless environment locally
npx vercel dev

It’s not perfect parity, but it catches 80% of issues without burning deployments.

5. Consider Vercel Pro (If This Happens Often)

Vercel Pro gives you 6,000 deployments/month ($20/month). If you’re consistently hitting free tier limits, the math works out: your time is worth more than $20.

The Actual Bugs I Was Fixing

For context, here’s what drove the deployment frenzy on copypastelearn.com:

1. Prisma/auth pages need force-dynamic — statically prerendered pages that use database queries crash at build time. Every auth-protected page needs export const dynamic = 'force-dynamic'.

2. Sitemap using wrong sort field — sortOrder vs order for lessons. One commit, one push, one deployment to verify.

3. Stripe client lazy-init — the Stripe client was initializing at import time, crashing builds when STRIPE_SECRET_KEY wasn’t available during static generation.

Each fix was small. But each required a Vercel deployment to verify because the issues were specific to the serverless environment.

Lessons Learned

1. Free tier limits are real. 100 deployments/day sounds generous until you’re debugging in production.
2. Every branch push costs a deployment. Disable preview deployments on branches you don’t need.
3. Batch your commits, push once. Your future self will thank you.
4. vercel dev is your friend. Use it before pushing.
5. The 25-minute cooldown is frustrating but gives you time to batch more fixes together. Silver lining.

The wall of red errors on my dashboard was a learning moment. Now my deployment hygiene is much better — and copypastelearn.com is running smoothly.

# Current deployment count today: 3
# Branches with auto-deploy: main only
# Feeling: much calmer