# The power of servers, in serverless form

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Fluid compute combines the efficiency of servers and the flexibility of serverless, enabling real-time, dynamic workloads like APIs, streaming, and AI.

## Pay for compute, not idle time

Fluid runs many requests on a single instance and bills only the CPU you actually use, never the time spent waiting.

- Traditional serverless wastes idle time. It fails to efficiently utilize available resources during periods of inactivity.

- Fluid runs invocations concurrently. Overall cloud resources provisioned are dramatically reduced while invocations are kept alive in-memory.

- CPU that’s charged when active, not idle. No more paying for I/O wait times, network latency, and API calls.

> “By leveraging in-function concurrency, we were able to share compute resources between invocations, cutting costs by over 50% with zero code changes.”

Lead Fullstack developer

- AI workloads. Run tasks with reduced latency and higher concurrency, delivering faster, scalable results for all users, regardless of the workload size.

- Business-critical APIs. Ensure fast, resilient API responses under heavy traffic, keeping experiences smooth and consistent.

- Server-side and partial pre-rendering. Generate dynamic pages with minimal latency, allowing for faster load times and seamless interactions.

- Middleware. Perform authentication checks and apply personalization, with the power of fluid computing.

Vercel Functions

## Bridging servers and serverless

Taking the best of servers and serverless to create a new model in computing, scaling business-critical workloads efficiently across global environments.

| Features | Servers | Serverless | Fluid |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Cold start handling | Not applicable | Cold starts | Cold-start prevention |
| Scaling | Manual scaling | Auto-scaling | Efficient auto-scaling |
| Concurrency | Horizontal | Vertical | Horizontal & vertical |
| Operational overhead | High maintenance | Minimal, inefficient | Minimal, optimized |
| Pricing model | Upfront cost per server | Pay-as-you-go model | Pay-as-you-compute |
| CPU efficiency | High efficiency | I/O bound inefficiency | Optimized I/O efficiency |

## Fluid compute for dynamic web applications

- In-function concurrencyRun multiple invocations on a single function instance, reducing idle compute time and lowering costs.

- Cold-start reductionFunctions are pre-warmed and optimized with bytecode caching, ensuring faster response times.

- StreamingSend data to users as it becomes available, improving performance for AI, media, and real-time apps.

- Cross-region failoverEnsures high availability by rerouting traffic to backup regions during outages.

- Dynamic scalingAutomatically adjusts concurrency and resource allocation based on real-time demand.

- Post-response tasksKeep functions running after sending a response to handle tasks like logging or database updates.

## Experience fluid

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