Vercel workflow

Vercel Workflow (opens in a new tab) has only been out for a week, yet I already find it to be the best option for running async workflows, and have successfully launched a new side project with it.

I considered and compared several alternatives, including Cloudflare Workflow, GCP Cloud Run, AWS Lambda, Trigger.dev, and Inngest. Vercel Workflow won because:

1. Vercel Workflow supports plain node functions. Just mark them with the "use workflow" or "use step" directives at the beginning and that's it. All other frameworks involve a fairly large overhead, like creating JSON or YAML configs, putting functions inside wrappers, injecting special environments.

2. Vercel Workflow's step function runs on full node runtime. This means any node library is within reach. In contrast, the worst alternative is Cloudflare Workflow, which only provides a limiting edge runtime. I use Prisma ORM to connect to a Neon Postgres database. If I had used Cloudflare Workflow, I would have to wrap the db connection in Cloudflare Hyperdrive, or Prisma Accelerate. Either options would be annoying to do, not to mention costly.

3. Vercel Workflow can leverage the perfect existing Vercel CI / CD experience. Every branch is auto deployed as preview, and this means I can easily test workflow changes without having to manually set up different environments.

This shows that execution quality trumps speed to market. Vercel Workflow launched years behind competitors, but they built something so good that the timing barely mattered. A good reminder that shipping fast means nothing if one is shipping the wrong thing.