--- title: What to Do if Your Site Is About to Hit Vercel's Free... description: A developer describes hitting Vercel's free-tier Image Optimization quota because his Next.js blog was rendering 691 cross-posted images (from freeCodeCamp and... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/what-to-do-if-your-site-is-about-to-hit-vercel-s-free-image-optimization-cap-szlbjxkv5 twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: What to Do if Your Site Is About to Hit Vercel's Free Image Optimization Cap | daily.dev og:description: A developer describes hitting Vercel's free-tier Image Optimization quota because his Next.js blog was rendering 691 cross-posted images (from freeCodeCamp and... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/what-to-do-if-your-site-is-about-to-hit-vercel-s-free-image-optimization-cap-szlbjxkv5 og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/SZlbjxKv5.png og:image:alt: What to Do if Your Site Is About to Hit Vercel's Free Image Optimization Cap og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # What to Do if Your Site Is About to Hit Vercel's Free Image Optimization Cap **[freeCodeCamp](https://daily.dev/sources/freecodecamp)** · [@fba](https://daily.dev/fba) · 9 min read · 2 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary A developer describes hitting Vercel's free-tier Image Optimization quota because his Next.js blog was rendering 691 cross-posted images (from freeCodeCamp and Hashnode CDNs) through next/image's optimization pipeline via images.remotePatterns. He explains two fixes: marking external images 'unoptimized' to skip Vercel's pipeline, versus downloading and re-hosting all images on his own Cloudflare R2 CDN. He chose the latter, walking through the download, upload, URL-rewrite, and config cleanup scripts, and reflects on the lesson to self-host images from backfilled content rather than linking to third-party CDNs. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Questions this post answers ### Why is my Vercel free tier image optimization quota getting used up by images I don't even host myself? Next.js's image component optimizes any source listed in images.remotePatterns regardless of whether it points to your own domain or a third-party one. If you've added external hosts like a CDN from a cross-posting platform to remotePatterns so backfilled article images render correctly, every fetch, resize, and re-encode of those images counts against your Vercel Image Optimization quota, not just your own media. _Anyone managing Next.js image quotas on Vercel can compare fixes like this through daily.dev before their own site hits the cap._ ### What are the options for fixing Vercel image optimization quota issues caused by external image sources in Next.js? Two options exist: pass the unoptimized prop to next/image for external sources so Vercel stops processing them entirely with zero quota impact but no resizing or AVIF conversion, or download and re-host all external images on your own CDN (such as Cloudflare R2) and remove the external hosts from remotePatterns, which keeps optimization benefits and removes the dependency on third-party URLs staying valid. _Developers weighing quick fixes against long-term ownership of assets can track this trade-off through daily.dev before migrating a CDN setup._ ### How many image references needed migration when moving from third-party CDN hosting to self-hosted R2 storage in a real Next.js blog? A migration of 691 image references across 33 blog posts pulled from freeCodeCamp's and Hashnode's CDNs was completed with 0 download failures, totaling about 105 MB, then re-hosted on Cloudflare R2 with 692 replacements made across the same 33 files (one image appeared twice in a single post) and zero unmapped URLs. _Teams planning a similar CDN migration can benchmark scope and effort against real numbers like these via daily.dev._ ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [My blog got popular, and my bandwidth exploded to ~300GB in just 10 days](https://daily.dev/posts/my-blog-got-popular-and-my-bandwidth-exploded-to-300gb-in-just-10-days-nflugkjyl) · Neciu Dan · 1 upvotes · 0 comments - [WordPress Image Optimization No Longer Needs a Second Plugin](https://daily.dev/posts/wordpress-image-optimization-no-longer-needs-a-second-plugin-7arp7ckse) · WP Mayor · 4 upvotes · 1 comments - [Four things that made my Eleventy website faster without removing the fun](https://daily.dev/posts/four-things-that-made-my-eleventy-website-faster-without-removing-the-fun-5pnqlr22o) · Blogging and all that Malarkey · 2 upvotes · 0 comments - [Optimizing Images with Eleventy on Netlify](https://daily.dev/posts/optimizing-images-with-eleventy-on-netlify-pqxya44ll) · Kitty says hi. · 1 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#nextjs](https://daily.dev/tags/nextjs), [#vercel](https://daily.dev/tags/vercel) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/what-to-do-if-your-site-is-about-to-hit-vercel-s-free-image-optimization-cap-szlbjxkv5) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"What to Do if Your Site Is About to Hit Vercel's Free Image Optimization Cap","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/what-to-do-if-your-site-is-about-to-hit-vercel-s-free-image-optimization-cap-szlbjxkv5","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/what-to-do-if-your-site-is-about-to-hit-vercel-s-free-image-optimization-cap-szlbjxkv5"},"datePublished":"2026-08-18T20:13:36.688Z","dateModified":"2026-09-13T20:00:17.096Z","description":"A developer describes hitting Vercel's free-tier Image Optimization quota because his Next.js blog was rendering 691 cross-posted images (from freeCodeCamp and...","image":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/18d10e8cbcddf7f8b496b1d12e07cebe?_a=AQAEuop","thumbnailUrl":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/18d10e8cbcddf7f8b496b1d12e07cebe?_a=AQAEuop","isAccessibleForFree":true,"articleSection":"freeCodeCamp","inLanguage":"en","publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180}},"author":{"@type":"Person","name":"Md. 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