Vercel — Engineering Performance
Avg. perf / dev / mo (ETV)
−5.5%
3.09 → 2.92
Active contributors
−8.6%
70.0 → 64.0
Growth
−0.4pp
34.1% → 33.7%
Fixes
+7.5pp
15.3% → 22.8%
Vercel vs. 500 OSS Performance Index
Per-engineer ETV for Vercel plotted against the pooled 500 OSS Performance Index. Both series are 90-day trailing rolling averages scaled to a 30-day month, so the curves sit on the same scale (ETV / dev / mo) and can be compared point-for-point. Latest reading: Vercel is 48% above the index (2.92 vs 1.97 ETV/dev/mo). Baseline gap was 45% above.
Monthly reports
Highlights
- Introduced first-class support for *Aube* and *nub* package managers in *Turborepo*, enhancing compatibility and developer experience via [0f780067 · Anthony Shew], [82b1cf13 · Anthony Shew], and [9d94ae50 · Anthony Shew].
- Optimized *Next.js* development HMR rebuilds, leading to faster iteration cycles and improved stability, as seen in [commit/f672d95].
- Enhanced *AI SDK* capabilities with support for *Anthropic Claude Sonnet 5* ([c18018cd · Gregor Martynus]) and improved observability by exposing `totalUsage` and `finishReason` on `DurableAgent.stream()` results ([d5803265 · Peter Wielander]).
- Implemented critical fixes for *AI SDK Workflow* message stream framing ([4a9f4d57 · Peter Wielander]) and improved workflow resilience against transient errors ([897aac97 · Pranay Prakash], [603ad976 · Pranay Prakash]).
- Upgraded CI/CD infrastructure by migrating key workflows to *ARM64 runners* for cost reduction and performance improvements ([38bd101b · Benjamin Woodruff], [c518402e · Benjamin Woodruff]).
Observations
- Development activity, measured by total commits, decreased to 435 this month, a 20% reduction compared to the 5-month average of 545 commits.
- The waste score increased by 25% (22 this month vs 18 5-month average), indicating a significant focus on addressing bugs and technical debt. Notable waste commits include critical fixes for *React reconciler* error recovery ([c3555f0c · Andrew Clark]), *Next.js* instant validation crashes ([af066a2f · Janka Uryga]), and *Turborepo* caching issues ([502ceaf4 · Anthony Shew]).
- A concentrated effort was observed in improving *Turborepo*'s package manager ecosystem, with multiple commits dedicated to `nub` and `Aube` support, lockfile handling, and `devEngines.packageManager` configuration ([0f780067 · Anthony Shew], [commit/50546f68], [658f6077 · Anthony Shew], [82b1cf13 · Anthony Shew], [53cddc8b · Anthony Shew], [f8787196 · Anthony Shew], [27ca9621 · Anthony Shew], [9d94ae50 · Anthony Shew]).
- Several critical bug fixes were implemented across the *AI SDK* and *Workflow* components, addressing issues like empty assistant messages ([d5984812 · Martín Russo]), orphaned tool approval responses ([a2750db5 · Gregor Martynus]), and transient transport failures ([603ad976 · Pranay Prakash]), suggesting a period of stabilization for these features.
- Significant maintenance work was performed on CI/CD and build systems, including pinning macOS Rust builds to `macos-15` to resolve build failures ([16fe0a4b · Anthony Shew]) and upgrading the workspace to *TypeScript 6* ([692a6ac5 · Nathan Colosimo]), which also involved refactoring for compatibility.
Repositories
Active repositories ranked by average performance per developer per month (over the last 90 days). The chart shows monthly performance composition — each repo as a stacked layer, with the top of the stack representing total org performance per month. Top 9 repos shown; the remainder is aggregated as “Other”.
| Repository | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| turborepo | 5 | 106 | 7.1 | +1349%since Q2 2025 |
| workflow | 9 | 107 | 4.0 | +104%since Q4 2025 |
| ai | 12 | 110 | 3.1 | +32%since Q2 2025 |
| next.js | 22 | 139 | 2.1 | +49%since Q2 2025 |
| vercel | 28 | 86 | 1.0 | +1979%since Q2 2025 |
| sandbox | 7 | 10 | 0.5 | — |
| sdk | 1 | 1 | 0.3 | −39%since Q2 2025 |
| swr | 4 | 1 | 0.1 | −100%since Q3 2025 |
| next-forge | 1 | 0 | 0.1 | −87%since Q2 2025 |
Company total9 repositories | 64unique devs | 560ETV total | 2.92ETV / dev / mo | +180%since Q2 2025 |
| Performance (ETV) is the sum of every repository above. Active devs at the company level counts unique contributors across all repos, so a contributor working in multiple repos is counted once here but appears in each repo's row (the per-repo column will sum higher). ETV / dev / mo = Company ETV ÷ unique devs ÷ 3 mo. The "Since start" column compares each repo's Q1 2026 quarterly performance to the first quarter it had any activity — for repos that existed in Q2 2025 (when this index began), that's Q2 2025; for younger repos it's the quarter they actually started. The company row uses Q2 2025 as the baseline since the index itself began then. | ||||
Performance Growth vs Active Contributors
Engineering performance is outpacing team growth by 10.4×. Left axis shows total performance score, right axis shows active contributor count. The gap between curves represents productivity gains — more delivered per person, not just more people. Unit: Engineering Throughput Value (ETV).
Cost per Performance Unit
−56%
If performance per engineer more than doubled, each unit of engineering performance now costs approximately 56% less than at the baseline 90-day window (ending 2025-06-29). This is a directional estimate — the exact figure depends on fully-loaded engineer cost, but the direction is unambiguous.
Effective Capacity Added
+82 engineers
At today's productivity, the current 64-person team delivers the performance equivalent of 146 engineers at the baseline 90-day rolling window (ending 2025-06-29). That's roughly 82 engineers worth of capacity added through productivity gains, not hiring.
Performance Composition
Stacked bars show total complexity performance split into Growth (new value), Maintenance (sustaining systems), and Fixes (rework). The yellow line overlays performance per contributor — rising line means each engineer is delivering more, regardless of team size changes. Unit: Engineering Throughput Value (ETV).
CapEx vs OpEx
Monthly CapEx vs OpEx split. CapEx (capitalizable investment) is Growth — new features and capabilities. OpEx (operating expense) is Maintenance plus Fixes — keeping the lights on and reworking what's already shipped. The yellow line is the CapEx share, a quick read on how much of the month went into building new vs sustaining existing. Unit: Engineering Throughput Value (ETV).
Hours per Repository
Trailing 90-day window (64 working days). Org-level capacity is allocated to each repo by its share of org performance, then split CapEx / OpEx by that repo's own Growth vs Maintenance + Fixes mix.
| sandbox | 51.2% | 48.8% |
| vercel | 45.7% | 54.3% |
| workflow | 34.0% | 66.0% |
| ai | 30.8% | 69.2% |
| turborepo | 30.6% | 69.4% |
| sdk | 30.3% | 69.7% |
| next.js | 29.5% | 70.5% |
| swr | 25.0% | 75.0% |
| next-forge | 0.0% | 100.0% |
| Total | 33.7% | 66.3% |
Fix Burden Distribution
Monthly rework volume broken down by who did it. Top contributors carry their named slice; everyone else is rolled into Others. Use this to spot whether fix work is concentrated on a small group (bus-factor risk) or distributed across the team.
Quarterly Summary
The raw numbers behind the charts: commits analyzed, active contributors, total performance, performance per developer, and the Growth / Maintenance / Fixes split for each quarter.
| Quarter | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Q2'25 | 1,830 | 55 | 214.08 | 1.3 | 20.8% | 64.8% | 14.4% | — |
| Q3'25 | 1,848 | 62 | 251.46 | 1.4 | 23.8% | 58.2% | 18.1% | +17% |
| Q4'25 | 1,963 | 67 | 297.14 | 1.5 | 31.6% | 53.1% | 15.4% | +18% |
| Q1'26 | 2,981 | 70 | 598.93 | 2.9 | 34.1% | 50.1% | 15.8% | +102% |
Top Contributors
Contributors ranked by performance per month (Growth + Maintenance + Fixes), over the last 90 days normalized to a 30-day calendar month.
The best way to measure AI efficiency
SampleA preview of the Navigara engine running on a sample organization. The numbers below are illustrative, not part of the OSS500 benchmark above.
Measure
Score every commit by depth
GitHub commits are weighted by what it took to write them, not by lines of code. The result is ETV per developer per month.
SourceGitHub
Spend
Tie ETV to cost
AI token bills and seat costs are pulled per team and divided by the ETV produced. The result is your true cost per unit of work.
SourceToken usage + finance
Map
Tie work to objectives
Each ETV is mapped to your Jira epics and labels, so you can see what's key-aligned, aligned, or unmapped capacity.
SourceJira
Performance
ETV delivered per developer / month
9.4ETV / dev / month
5.6 below target- Non-AI 5.8
- AI 3.6
AI Efficiency
AI spend per ETV unit delivered
$4.20
$0.60 over target- Cost / ETV $4.20
Objective Alignment
Share of work mapped to key objectives
51%
24 pts below target- Key-aligned 28%
- Aligned 23%