About the program
The Vercel Open Source Program is a grant for the people who already run a project, not a route in for someone who wants to start. Accepted repositories receive platform hosting and credits worth $3,600 per project per quarter, which is the line item that usually decides whether a small team can keep a preview environment, an edge function and a build pipeline running without a commercial contract behind it.
Cohorts are selected quarterly and the Winter 2026 cohort carried 32 projects. Applications reopen for the next quarter rather than running on a rolling window, so the calendar matters more here than the deadline.
Read the terms before planning around it: this is credit, not salary. It lowers a project's hosting bill and pays nobody a stipend, which makes it the wrong answer for a contributor looking for income and a very good one for a maintained library that has outgrown its free tier.
Primary stack
Technical focus
The path
- 01Confirm eligibility
The program funds maintained open-source projects. A repository with an active maintainer and a public user base is the profile it looks for.
- 02Apply for the next quarter
Applications open per cohort on vercel.com/open-source-program; the Winter 2026 round closed with 32 projects accepted.
- 03Receive the credit
Accepted projects are granted $3,600 in platform credit per quarter against their Vercel usage.
- 04Stay in good standing
Cohorts are quarterly, so continued access depends on the project still being live and maintained at the next review.
Who it's for
- Maintainers of open-source libraries and tools whose hosting bill has become the constraint
- Project teams running preview deployments and edge functions for every pull request
- Anyone weighing whether to move a hobby project onto a paid plan for infrastructure rather than features
What you walk away with
- $3,600 of quarterly platform credit per accepted project
- Preview and production infrastructure that survives a spike in traffic
- No cash stipend and no contributor seat - the grant goes to the project
- A quarterly review, so the credit tracks the project staying maintained
Program timeline
Calendar positions for the 2026 cycle - the marker shows October, where you are now.
- Winter cohortFeb - Mar
- Spring cohortMay - Jun
- Summer cohortAug - Sep
Organizations
Reading the participation record...
More programs we track
Everything else on the calendar - 12 other mentored routes from first PR to paid season.
