Skip to content

Deploy a container from a plain Dockerfile

Jeff SeeSoftware Engineer

You can now deploy a plain root Dockerfile or Containerfile on Vercel's Container runtime when no other framework is detected. Vercel selects the Container preset, builds that file, and routes all traffic to the resulting image. To get started with containers on Vercel, add a Dockerfile:

Dockerfile
FROM node:26-alpine


RUN npm i -g srvx


COPY . /app
WORKDIR /app


EXPOSE 3000
CMD ["srvx", "--port", "3000"]

When project detection matches another framework, such as Django, that framework still wins. To build use the Dockerfile or Containerfile instead, run vercel project update --framework container, or set the framework in vercel.json:

vercel.json
{
  "framework": "container"
}

A Dockerfile.vercel or Containerfile.vercel continues to win over a detected framework, and multi-service projects still use vercel.json services with a per-service entrypoint.

The Container runtime is in beta, runs on Vercel Functions, and is billed with Active CPU pricing. Read the Container runtime documentation to get started.