Life of a Vercel request: Application-aware routing

Routing is a fundamental part of delivering applications, but it's often treated as an afterthought—tacked onto the caching layer and configured through complex YAML or manual click-ops. This can introduce friction for teams, increase the risk of misconfigurations, and slow down deployments, especially as applications grow in complexity.

Vercel takes a different approach: routing is built into the platform as an application-aware gateway that understands your codebase. This unlocks a range of capabilities that simplify development by reducing configuration overhead, minimizing latency, and enabling more advanced architectures.

The Gateway Advantage

The gateway has full context of your deployments, domains, and logic. It supports standard routing and custom rules, but goes beyond reverse proxying by interpreting application logic in real time to make smarter decisions, like skipping unnecessary compute.

How It Works

Here's how Vercel routes requests—and why it makes building performant, complex apps easier:

1. **Request Analysis**: Every incoming request is analyzed for routing patterns

2. **Smart Routing**: The gateway makes intelligent decisions based on your application structure

3. **Performance Optimization**: Unnecessary compute is skipped when possible

4. **Real-time Adaptation**: The system adapts to your application's needs in real time

Benefits

• **Reduced Configuration**: Less manual setup required
• **Better Performance**: Intelligent routing decisions improve response times
• **Scalability**: The system scales with your application's complexity
• **Developer Experience**: Focus on building features, not managing infrastructure

This approach represents a fundamental shift in how we think about application routing and deployment.